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Reconciling Passion & The Leap

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I’ve been working on the same novel since the beginning of time.

In my first incarnation I probably wore mammoth furs and carved this story onto a cave wall with an antler dipped in red ochre.

As a slave, I likely told it orally at the close of an endlessly long and grueling day. My “master” wouldn’t have allowed me to learn how to read and write, but that didn’t stop this creation from wanting to come through me. So I must have whispered it in the dark to my children as I tucked them into bed.

In my pioneer days, I imagine myself putting up tomatoes, scrubbing the diapers of my twelve children on a washboard, and pausing every few hours to pick up my goose quill and scratch out pieces of this story, only to have it end up in the fire because we needed starter.

Countless incarnations, same story wanting to be born through me.

This “time” around the story began to nudge me in 1999. On and off for sixteen years I’ve heeded the call—through my divorce, my cross-country move, countless surgeries, and some of the brightest and darkest days of my life.

Last year, I trashed 224 pages of it, and began again.

Yep… still the same story.

As I begin to wrap up this first book of this trilogy, I’ve been pondering my life/lives as Writer & Storyteller. And… as the Universe so oft does, I’ve been witness to some pretty incredible serendipities surrounding my thought processes.

Case in point was a conversation I listened to a few days ago between Elizabeth Gilbert and Brené Brown. It was the finale of the season of Liz’s Magic Lessons podcast.

Brené was talking about taking leaps and experiencing failure. And something she said struck me, “I don’t leap or jump for the landing. I leap for the experience through the air. Because you cannot predict the landing.” She went on to say, “I used to ask myself this question all the time: what would I do if I knew I could not fail? But now the question becomes for me: What’s worth doing, even if I fail?

(I hang my head in shame over the number of times I’ve asked a client: What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?) But, since Brené is the Shame Slayer, I forgive myself and understand that was the old me. The new me that is being born, squalling and covered in slime, would much rather reflect on “What’s worth doing, even if I fail?”

Liz responded by saying she has always wanted to take a Sharpie and place an editing carrot over all the “What would you do if you knew you could not fail” bumper stickers in the world, and replace them with these questions instead:

What do you love doing so much that the word ‘failure’ doesn’t even have any meaning?

What would you do even if it was a total failure?

What do you want to do because you don’t have a choice?

Then Liz asked this question: “When did inspiration promise us that it owes us anything?”

And… all the way back to the very beginning of my soul’s time, the massive quantities of hair on my caveman body stood on end.

Liz continued: “As far as I understand inspiration, it owes you nothing, except the transcendence of the experience of working with it at all. That’s the only contract that we have with inspiration.”

Finally Liz quoted Clive James, saying: “Failure has a function. It asks you if you really want to go on making things.”

Let me repeat that, and bold it, and underline it. Here you go… Failure “asks you if you really want to go on making things.”

And the answer for me is a resounding “HELL YES!”

The Landing

Now, all of this is not to say that I don’t have intentions for my “landing” as a writer:

  • I intend to sell my speculative fiction trilogy within the next two years to tremendous success.
  • I intend to write and sell a few books a year after that, again to tremendous success.
  • I intend to make a beautiful living as a writer.
  • I intend to hit the New York Times bestseller lists, every single time.
  • I  intend for my all of my books to become International Bestsellers, again, every single time.
  • I intend to go on a worldwide book tour.
  • I intend to have tea with Philip Pullman.  Lunch with Patrick Rothfuss. Dinner with…

And… if all of the above weren’t to happen, I would still be a writer. I would still write. I would still leap and revel in my time in the air. After all, I believe my soul and all its incarnations is that of storyteller. It seems there’s no getting around that.

I can’t begin to tell you the freedom I feel to create whatever is within me.

As I pondered all of this for days, I realized that it’s been informing my work since the beginning without my realizing it.

I’m not here to help my clients write a book in 30 days (though I have some amazing colleagues who do just that.) I’m not here to help them hit the #1 category on Amazon, which usually equates to:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Gnats > Bugs > Bug Anatomy > Extraneous Parts > Goo

Nope. I want to help them become writers. I want to be part of the leap and not the landing. I want to help them “apply ass to chair” and truly experience the process: the journey, the healing, the laughter, the tears, the transcendence. I want to help them learn how to translate what they see in their mind onto the blank page with clarity, so that others may see it as well. I want to help them dig into the dark of their internal world and bring it into the light, allowing their readers to learn something new about themselves and the world.

I want to help writers to “tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. [A] tale [that] will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. [To shape the future.] ~ The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I can’t count the number of clients who’ve come to me with business plans, and “shoulds”, and money-making ideas based on their past work histories who, after three or four sessions, finally utter this one truth: “I don’t really want to do all that. I don’t. I just want to be a writer. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

That, for me, is the crux of Liz and Brené’s conversation – to fully own and integrate our soul’s whisper (or scream, as the case may be); our passion, regardless of the outcome. And it will forever inform my work in the world as writer and Book Shaman. I want my clients to yell, midair: “YES, YES, YES… THIS, THIS, THIS.”

And… I jest with the Amazon blurb.

Sort of.

As you can clearly see from my own landing intentions, I fully support dreams, “going big or going home,” and the longing to make your mark on the world; to be seen and heard. I’m not opposed to success and bestsellerdom. I want those things too. And I know the process of platform building, marketing, getting on “the list”, managing a book tour, blah, blah, blah. I’m happy to share this experience with clients. But, my main focus needs to be on the “what”, the “calling” itself—yep…the leap.

It’s the same for my business coaching. I’m not concerned with blanket statements like this: “you have to have an opt-in with a freebie gift to get folks to sign up for your newsletter.” Instead, what feels true for you right now? What feels like freedom and love, and what inspired action can you take around that? I wholly believe:

[tweetthis]We are only responsible for inspired action and what we are called to create.[/tweetthis]

It’s time to let go of the results, the “shoulds”, the “have-tos”, and other folks’ reaction to our creations.

One of the final things Brené shared on the podcast was a quote that is tacked up on her wall that says: “Creativity: We don’t have to do it alone. We were never meant to.”  We don’t have to suffer our art, folks. We don’t have to be starving artists, huddled alone in our darkened rooms, sacrificing, slicing up bits of our soul, peppering it with spices, and serving it up on a platter. We really don’t. We just have to fully embrace and enjoy the leap, and not concern ourselves so much with the landing.

(You can listen to the whole podcast here. It’s well worth your time.)

Self-Worth = Financial Worth?

When I was sixteen I got a job at Curly’s Dari Freeze.

Curly himself was short, squat, and lacking hair, so I’m not sure where the name “Curly” came in, but he was a jovial guy, and I usually only saw him when it was time to collect the monies at the end of the night. Who knows? Perhaps he liked to play with words. At least that’s what I told myself when I would wonder why the word “dairy” was misspelled. But, I digress.

I started out making malts, shakes and sundaes, but was quickly promoted to cook where I slung hamburgers, dropped picadillies into the fryer, and cut footlong dogs down the middle, slapping them on the grill for a sear.

I would go home at night and smell as if I’d rolled around on that sizzling hot grill with my hair hanging in the fryer in a lover’s tryst of Animal Farm meets spatula slathered in vegetable oil.

My senior year in high school I enrolled in the work study program and was promoted to opener at Curly’s. I’d arrive at 5:45, bleary-eyed from staying up all night reading bodice-rippers, and start the coffee. My first day of the new shift one of my regulars, Bob, asked for breakfast and I told him it was my first day, but I could make him french toast, french toast or french toast.

Suffice it to say, he ordered french toast.

It wasn’t very long, however, before I was flinging flapjacks, and cracking eggs into a round silver disk and carrying three plates on my arm. One of which was always for Bob.

I don’t remember what I made at the start of that job, but I think it was around $1.85 per hour, but with each “promotion” I got a bit of a raise. (And… to a girl who paid for her own car, insurance and extra school clothes, each additional cent meant a new banana clip or a pair of jeans I could sew my own legs into, thereby cutting off my circulation as was the fashion.)

When I graduated from high school I tore off my greasy apron and went to work for Petrolane. I made around $8.00 an hour filing manila folders, answering the phone, making collection calls, and doing my best not to freeze my fingers while filling propane tanks. I won’t bore you with the details, but over the next three or four years I became Office Manager of the Salt Lake City district office at $14.12, and a few years later was promoted to Credit and Collections Supervisor covering 167 district offices across the United States, and bringing in $30.00 per hour. This was around 1994ish. I was 24.

The story is the same, so we’ll fast forward through my helping-individuals-suffering-with-mental-illness-to-manage-their-SSI/SSD; my chap-wearing-tequila-slinging-liver-curdling bartending days; and my eighty-hours-per-week-Virtual-Assistant–eventual-CEO-of-Online-Business-Visionaries-until-I-was-so-burned-out-I-could-hardly-lift-my-pinkie-toe days…

And so we arrive where I am now as a Visionary Business Coach, Book Shaman and Story Shape Shifter. During my coach training I had a lovely coach buddy and we spent an hour a piece each week coaching each other for free before I felt confident enough to charge for my services. All this despite the fact that I had been coaching without getting paid for years.

So… Why the Resume?

I’ve been pondering the correlation between self-worth and financial worth as of late. I can feel that the two are related, but grasping an exact understanding is like trying to grab a handful of smoke from Curly’s grill.

Then I read this Guide to Killer Confidence by Mindy Kaling and knew that I had to add confidence and hard work to the above correlation.

Let’s break it down:

Hard Work = Part of what I love about Mindy’s article is that she doesn’t apologize for hard work. I would expand on that to say that there’s a huge difference in working hard in a job you loathe and working hard at something you’re passionate about. When I’m doing something I love it doesn’t feel like work at all, but you can bet I’m “working” hard. I truly do think “hard work” gets a bad rap these days. (← A blog for another time.)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a professional chef opening her own restaurant and gaining Michelin Stars by nuking bean and cheese burritos topped with cheesy puffs, and spending eighteen hours every day playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Or a New York Times bestselling author like Stephen King writing four words a day on every fifth Thursday of the year.

Or a flautist with the London Symphony Orchestra whose flute is so dusty it makes her sneeze when she plays it once every decade.

Self-Worth = “The sense of one’s own value or worth as a person.” ~ Dictionary.com

Confidence = “Belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities.” ~ Dictionary.com

Financial = “Pertaining or relating to money and credit.” ~ Dictionary.com and Worth = “Having a value of” / “Excellence of character or quality as commanding esteem.” ~ Dictionary.com

You see, when I started at the Dari Freeze I had very little confidence. I would angst over how many nuts to sprinkle on a sundae, or whether the maraschino cherry was too hammered in its own juices to use.

With hard work at each new job, and with each new experience, my confidence grew, resulting in promotion after promotion, and raise after raise. And so on, ad nauseam.

Hard work → confidence → self-worth → financial worth. The energy that you put into an endeavor is equivalent to the energy you get back (monies). After all, “money is just energy, dummies.”

I’m still noodling this theory, so you can bet I’ll continue to write about it, but I’d really love to hear whether this feels true for you, or if you have a different experience.

For my visual peeps out there:

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Love vs. Fear: The Experiments

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I know. I know. You’ve heard the concept of love versus fear about a trillion times, so I’ll just let Oprah boil it down briefly: “Every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”

This idea has knocked around in my head for years, but it wasn’t until recently that I pulled it from the recesses of my mind to conduct a little experiment:

Every time I go to make a decision, I have to ask myself if I’m making the decision out of love or fear.

Experiment #1:

A few weeks ago, I wanted to go to a new farm-to-table, upscale Southern restaurant with people I love more than anyone on the planet. They said they wanted to go too. Later that day they opted for Olive Garden. (Let’s put aside my disdain for chain restaurants momentarily.) They were getting ready to move and were sticking to a budget—something I totally get.

But I so wanted them to experience the taste of the strawberry balsamic shrub on their tongues—the notes of vinegar, the seeds of the strawberries, the tangy, tart, weird sort of yumminess of it all. I wanted them to cut into a piping hot, fried green tomato and have the light batter crunch in their mouths, and I wanted them to watch as the butter melted into a pool on the iron skillet cornbread.

It wasn’t just about farm-to-table versus chain. It was about experiencing this food with people I love. It was about dining on the porch in the late summer sun. It was about watching them taste some of this stuff for the first time. I asked myself if my budget would allow me to help pay for dinner. My Inner Bastard went crazy:

Me: All the bills are paid. More money’s coming in. Let’s do it!

Inner Bastard: You’re one fried-green tomato away from the poor house and you’re gonna “end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river.”

Me: That’s ridiculous. I’m fine. I’ve got savings. I don’t even have credit card debt.

Inner Bastard: You better save the strawberry seeds from your shrub ’cause that’s all you’ll have to eat for the next few weeks.

I stopped myself. That was fear talking.

I redirected: Does it feel like love? Really, does it FEEL like love to take these people you worship to this restaurant and help to pay?

The answer was a resounding yes.

We went, and it was everything I hoped it would be, minus the fly that wouldn’t leave me or my spoon alone. (Let’s set that aside though as well, shall we?)

Experiment #2:

I’m tired.

Just plumb worn out.

Summer sometimes does that to me.

It’s like the first time I went to Europe, and I packed my bag so full that I ended up zipping my favorite gray cable-knit sweater right through the zipper. To boot, there wasn’t room to take anything back, so I had to buy a whole new bag while I was there to schlep all my new stuff home.

Summer feels like that—like cramming in too many trips, parties, barbecues, and concerts, until my very soul is stuck in the zipper. No wonder we hibernate in the winter. We’re exhausted.

Summer should be long, lazy, and sloth-like with space to sit around a campfire and try to remember all the constellations you learned in Astronomy 101 decades before. There should be time to head up to your power spot on the mountain, top down, with the pups in their carseats as their long, pink tongues flap in the breeze.

I told my family I would come visit them for my birthday. I keep asking myself if it feels like love or fear.

I’m afraid the answer is fear. I’m worried they’ll be hurt if I don’t come. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to nap, and read, and nap some more.

The jury is still out for me on this one. I’m torn. I love them beyond what I can express, so that part feels like love. Taking another summer trip doesn’t. My Inner Bastard doesn’t help:

Inner Bastard: They’ll never speak to you again. When you die, they won’t go to your funeral, and when your mom sends them little vials of your ashes, they’ll end up rattling around in the bottom of the grand-niece’s toy boxes underneath the Happy Meal plastics.

Experiment #3:

Nothing feels more like love to me than summertime reading. Or wintertime, springtime, and fall-time reading.

And… admittedly, I have some quirks around reading.

You see, I go in spurts with things. It’ll go something like this: I read every fiction book I can find that’s set in WWII/Nazi Germany until I can barely lift my head from the sadness, and I’ll only have eaten one single, solitary, sliced olive over the course of two days. Books like: Sarah’s Key, All the Light We Cannot See, The Book Thief, The Nightingale, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Ooh… pie? I immediately switch genres and read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and I fall so deeply in love with Flavia de Luce that I read all seven novels in Alan Bradley‘s series in just over a month. Once finished, I’m bereft. I sob. I grieve. I resign myself to waiting for book eight like all the other sad sacks in the world.

After a day or two of mourning Flavia, I remember one of my other favorite characters in literature: Scout Finch… Thus begins my annual binge of Southern/Southern Gothic fiction with young quirky characters in an epochal Bildungsroman (Coming of Age): Bastard Out of Carolina, The Homecoming of Samuel Lake, The Secret Life of Bees, My Last Days as Roy Rogers, Whistling Past the Graveyard. And… on it goes until I find myself on a witch kick or a fictional Mary Magdalene obsession.

This is all a long way of saying that deep in the heat of summer I always come back ’round to my Coming-of-Age-set-in-the-South books. I inevitably end up worrying that I’ve read all books of the kind, but then I find: Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, which leads me to Because of Winn-Dixie… because ice cream leads to store. Literally and figuratively.

So… aside from sharing my unequivocal reading neuroses, which may land me in a padded cell with no books whatsoever, I do have a point. I finished Because of Winn-Dixie the other night and felt profound yuck. How was I going to find my next book? I’ve read them all. I fell asleep with a lone tear barreling down my cheek.

The next day, before I’d finished my first cup of coffee, I had performed an exhaustive search on Google for books in that genre. Next thing I knew I had purchased The Pecan Man, The Secret Sense of Wildflower, and Orphan Train —-> because, clearly, I’ll be jumping tracks to orphans fairly soon.

Yes, I’m still getting to my point. Really. Just one more thing. Have I ever let leak the fact that I have over 200 kindle books? 75% of which I haven’t yet read? Or… did I fail to ever mention the fact that my bookshelves each hold double stacks of books that I haven’t yet read? I’ll bet you I have over 300 books in my “to-be-read” piles/shelves/whole bookcases.

And here we are, finally, at the point. When I performed that exhaustive search and bought more to-be-read books, I was acting wholly out of fear. Fear that I wouldn’t feel the same feeling with a single one of those three-hundred books I already have. Fear that the books I was searching for would suddenly be out of print. Unavailable. Not for me.

My Inner Bastard had nothing to say on this one. He was buried under a pile of said books.

I had forgotten to check in before I clicked buy. I hadn’t asked myself the question. Am I buying these books out of love or fear? Typically, any type of book buying for me is a love thing, but sometimes it’s not. This time it was not.

The next day I told a dear friend about my experiments, and all about my thoughts on love versus fear and how it’s everywhere. Every. Where. And how it’s the foundation of everything we do in our lives.

She asked, “So what’s next for you?”

“Practice. That’s it. Nothing big or grand or deep. Just practice.” I told her, as I stroked my Kindle.

For my visual peeps out there:

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On Writing the “Shitty First Draft”

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I’ve been working on the same novel since 1999. Let me do the math for you. That’s sixteen years, folks. Now, mind you, I wasn’t “applying ass to chair” every day of those sixteen years. I took a five-year hiatus to drink my face off in Cleveland, for example. I was on break during my divorce and moves back and forth across country. I was definitely on leave during my five surgeries.

When I look back with my hindsight goggles, however, there weren’t many days that went by when I wasn’t thinking about my story and my characters. (Okay, perhaps while plugged into the morphine drip, but otherwise, yeah, I was writing in my head the whole time.)

On paper, I had written 224 pages of my trilogy. One day last fall I decided it was time to get back to it. (I’ve often wondered if I had a whole lot of living to do before I could tell this story.  I think there’s real truth there or, at least, that’s the story I’m sticking to.) Suffice it to say, I signed up for a master’s program, trashed my glorious 224 pages, plus notes, and started over on draft number two which, in essence, is really just another first draft because, just like me, my beloved novel had changed. I’m 128 pages in this go-round and, holy hell, is it awful.

Disclaimer: My “glorious” 224 pages were awful too. A complete and utter heaping pile of bat dung.

I’m not being modest.

Trust me.

The state of my second attempt at a fecal first draft has me pondering the brilliance of Anne Lamott and her concept of the “shitty first draft.” I haven’t read “Bird by Bird” (my favorite writing book of all time) for years, but I’ve used the term “shitty first draft” a billion times since then in my writing coaching. I’m not going to try to recreate Anne’s words or write them in my own voice because you just shouldn’t fuss with perfection. Here’s what she has to say:

“…shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)”

Here’s the rub… As I re-read those words I realized I really did think I would get an exemption. A hall pass. An official letter that said, “Hey, you’ve read thousands of books in all the genres, you’ve taken every writing course known to man, you went for a bachelor’s in creative writing and now you’re working on a master’s in the same vein. You’ve studied all the craft books. You’ve been blogging consistently since 2009. You go ahead and write out your brilliance on the first take.” I quite literally believed that all of those logged hours of writing, reading, studying, and helping folks to birth their own books, would mean I was off the hook for the “shitty first draft.”

I wasn’t.

But in knowing this concept inside and out, what strikes me most is what a hard time I give myself over my crappy writing. I mean, this is my work in the world. I give writers permission to write their own shitty first draft every single day. I profess it like a mantra. I’m sure my clients would like to bash my head in sometimes. I also give writers full autonomy to write what comes and I advise them to keep the creation process wholly separate from the editing process so their inner critic can’t raise its ugly head so often, or so harshly. And their books are born that way. Yet somehow, I assumed that my book baby would rush out of my creative center devoid of mucous, cooing happily, and without the cone head.

What an idiot. Or not… How can I say yes to a shitty first draft? Well, for one, I know what I want my book to be and I know it’s not there yet. That is beautiful, people. Enough cannot be said about that inherent knowing of how you want your work to be in the world; of how you see it in its future incarnation; of how glorious is its potential. That’s where all my logged hours of reading and study comes in. I know what makes up a good book, for me, and I know I’m not there yet. So I get to sit, draft after draft, and clean off the slime. If I didn’t enjoy the process so much, I’d take up nail filing or something.

Regardless, I don’t get a hall pass. I don’t get an exemption certificate. No letter is coming anytime soon. I get to sludge through every gaping hole in my plot. I get to tackle every character detail disconnect until I know my characters as well as I know myself. I get to swim upstream through my passive voice and my cloyingly annoying adverbs and -ing words. <— See what I did there?

Just like every other writer in the world.

[tweetthis]No writer gets a hall pass excusing them from writing a “shitty first draft.”[/tweetthis]

Except that one woman Anne mentioned.

And… I don’t like her very much either.

For my visual peeps out there:

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On Queendom & Building Your World (Plus a Gift!!!)

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Not so very long ago I felt like there was a rent in the fabric of my world.

I was uprooted…

Unsettled.

Undone.

A lot of paradigms shifted for me last year. I was so unraveled that I actually wrote out everything that happened in that 12-month period and sent it to my dear friend and fellow coach, Lisa Hayes, and she wrote an obituary for me for 2014. (I highly recommend this process. Boy, was it super powerful.)

Most folks usually feel pretty firmly planted in their worlds. Normally I do too, but what had seemed like old hat stuff to me, was now new hat stuff and I needed a different hat. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what kind of hat I liked anymore. I knew it wasn’t a baseball cap that says I ♥ Bieber in tiny diamond rhinestones. It wasn’t a black felt fedora either. It most definitely wasn’t one of those Little House on the Prairie bonnets that Laura Ingalls wore. I felt fairly clear on what kind of hat it wasn’t and that was good. Oftentimes we gain clarity by figuring out what we don’t want.

But, while I was über clear on what I didn’t want, I was struggling mightily to get clear on what I did want, let alone being able to catch the tiniest glimpse of how I wanted to feel in my life. Surgery, deaths, anxiety, a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis – I’m telling you, it was a rough 2014, to say the least.

I figured I couldn’t possibly be alone in feeling so lost. Surely there were others like me who had trouble getting to that quiet place of contemplation surrounding their desires after an uprooted time in their life. Undoubtedly, there were at least a couple someones who weren’t sure what it was they were looking for. And… one thing I knew for sure? I wasn’t the only one who’d had one helluva tough year.

So… I dove into the core of my savage geekery and pulled out a little writing tool called Worldbuilding. Using my knowledge of deliberate creation and bits and pieces of my Story Shape Shifting program, I began a process of rebuilding my world from the ground up. Suffice it to say, I found my hat.

It’s a crown.

And when I wear it, I remember that I get to build and rule my world.

The journey I took was so powerful, I decided to write up the process and reached out to my favorite designer (Shannon Kaiser of Play With The World) to build it out for me all pretty-like.

And it’s my gift to you.  

If you’ve had a rough year, or even if it was only mildly annoying, and you’re looking to change some things up, feel free to download it by opting in here. When you sign up for Worldbuilding: Create Your Life & CLAIM Your Crown, you’ll be automatically re-routed to a page where you can download the PDF document. You’ll also be subscribed to my blog which goes out once or twice a month in newsletter format.

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Enjoy! And please let me know here in the comments about your experiences in doing this powerful process.

Donning my diadem,

Melanie

The 4 Commandments of Launching a Program

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I have been seriously pushing my edge as of late. I’m no longer drafting along behind (if you’ve read my Copycat, Copycat blog you’ll know of what I speak, but… essentially it means I’ve stepped out fully on my own.)

Pushing edges is damn scary. In fact, I’ve had moments of such utter terror that it’s hard to put into words. (Or to breathe.)  I recently launched a piece of my soul and heart’s work out in to the Big U(niverse) in my Story Shape Shifting & Memoir Writing Program. “Hallelujah, Holy Shit… Where’s the Tylenol?” I’ve felt nauseous with elation and anticipation and, of course, a sprinkling of fear and a whole lot of self-doubt. I’ve also felt moments of such intense connection as I’ve interviewed candidates and have felt as if nothing I’ve ever written or offered has felt so divinely inspired or so in line with everything I believe and in how I see the world.

I promised that I would write a blog about how to launch an offering in more depth, but what I’ve realized is: I DON’T KNOW and IT DEPENDS. I’ve come to understand that launching is no different than anything else. It’s not about following a bunch of rules – send 3-4 emails to your list offering a preview call, ask affiliate partners to mail for the preview call, get people who sign up for the call into the “bucket”, send 8-10 emails to said bucket, blah, blah, blah… My tribe isn’t a frothy liquid sloshing around out there.

Rather, launching is about following my intuition and my feel good.

I know how to market, it’s what I did for many years, but when I started asking the question “Does that feel good?” The answer was a resounding “no.”  Bear in mind, this is no judgement on folks who follow the traditional methods of marketing – the traditional methods feel good for some, they’ve felt good for me at times, but in this precise moment they just don’t.

This blog isn’t intended to give you a five-part plan on how to launch. Instead, I want to share the psychology of launching your heart’s work into the world through a series of analogies.

I recently had a catch-up call with my dear friend, Amy Ahlers, and was whining about how unbelievably hard it is to launch. After a deep belly howl of true understanding, she apologized for laughing and listened to my fears. You see, I’ve helped Amy to launch Visionary Ignition Switch with Lissa Rankin, Find Your Calling with Lissa & Martha Beck, TWICE, not to mention helping dozens of other clients launch their big offerings out into the world. I’ve been on the back end many times – creating squeeze and sales pages, inputting bucket emails, building campaigns in Infusion Soft, noodling launch strategy and managing the customer experience. I know this process like the back of my freckled hand.

What I didn’t know, and the reason for Amy’s conspiratorial guffaws, was how tender it feels when it’s something you yourself have created and is something that is so near and dear to your heart. I imagine it’s akin to what a young guy must feel when he’s pined after a girl for years and finally gets the nerve up to ask her for coffee. Well, okay, maybe these days he texts her, but that doesn’t work for my analogy because it’s not as scary. No, in my analogy he’s loved her since they were two, he’s never had a single thought of another girl in his entire life and he has to ask her out, in person, just hours after a particularly grievous bout of acne and an outbreak of herpes simplex 1 on his lower lip.

That’s about how vulnerable I think one feels when they launch. Or… at least, that’s how I feel.

If the by-now-pockmarked-boy-asking-his-love-to-coffee analogy doesn’t work for you, how about this one: Project Runway! If you’ve seen the show then you’ve watched the designers running through Mood, jumping over Swatch the dog, sewing like the wind back in the work room, being snarky with their peers, trying to “Make it Work,” and showing their work to Heidi, Zac & Nina.  Well, I’ve done that behind the scenes work in terms of launching. I’ve shown up and sketched, found my fabric, pieced it together into something I believe is beautiful and shown it to a few people. Upon launching, however, it feels as if I’ve made it to New York Fashion Week and now I have to show it to the masses.  So, here’s what I’ve learned along the way; my commandments, if you will:

  1. Be Willing to Be Authentic: Listen to that Inner Voice, the one that never steers you wrong. Listen to the signs from your body, that’s your true north. From creation to debut, allow yourself to be completely 1000% authentically you. Let your offering come from your soul – tell us what you believe, tell us story, speak to us, and follow your feel good and intuition. Create something that you would sign up for in a nanosecond. If it doesn’t set you on fire and feel joyful, you likely haven’t hit the mark yet.
  2. Be Willing to Play: If you don’t put yourself out there, you’ll never know if you’ll succeed or not. My amazeballs friend, Mike Robbins, who was drafted by the Kansas City Royals wrote about this in his book Nothing Changes Until  You Do in an essay called “Swing Hard (Just in Case You Hit It)”.  In this piece Mike writes about a peer, Geoff, who went on to play professionally who “never stopped swinging hard, and throughout his very successful major league career, he got quite a few hits (1,293 total) and hit a lot of home runs (221 total). He also struck out 1,186 times.”  Geoff never would have hit 1,293 balls without being willing to strike out 1,186 times. You have to be willing to put yourself in the game and play.
  3. Be Willing to Listen & Tweak:  When I first launched my Story Shape Shifting program, I’d given folks a ridiculously short span of time to sign up. It’s a high-end, platinum program that requires commitment and I barely gave folks time to tap in to feel whether it was right for them. After a bit of feedback and listening on my end, I moved the start date a month forward to November 20th, which gave both me and my clients space. It felt so good to listen to that feedback and make a decision I knew was right.
  4. Be Willing to Let Go: This is a tough one. There’s a lot of attachment that comes when you’re putting your heart out there. You’ve likely invested months of blood, sweat and tears into something you believe in infinitely more than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Don’t intend to fail, but be willing to let go if it’s just not working. If it no longer feels fun and you’re finding yourself longing to drink Jim Beam out of a Dixie cup every night, it may be time to let go and try something else. Or… it may be time to look at the energy you have around your program. Or… it may be timing.  Allow yourself to really tap in and feel into what you know is true, whatever that may be. And… letting go isn’t just about letting go of your launch, it’s letting go of attachment to outcome. You’ve likely done everything you can do, allow yourself to sit back and enjoy the ride. (I’m so thoroughly enjoying this ride now that I’ve released my attachment.)

I’d love to hear your experience with launching a product or program. How did it feel for you? What were your results? Did you enjoy the process or is there something you would have done differently if given the chance? Any tips for our launchers out there?

With love & Black Pearl Oolong in my Dixie Cup,

Melanie

Are Your Current Stories Serving You?

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been telling a story that doesn’t serve me.

At least not any longer.

The story is this: I’m a behind-the-scenes type of gal who gets her kicks from supporting others. In other words, I’m not a leader.

Evidence:

In high school my best friend decided to try out for cheerleading and, being like any other teenage girl, I followed my friends like a good little lemming. I showed up to tryout practice every day with my 80’s hair swept up in a banana clip and yet I. just. wasn’t. getting. it. I’ve blocked out most of this memory, mainly the fact that I looked like Steve Martin in The Jerk trying to snap his fingers, yelling “Grandma, I got it!” when he clearly didn’t have “it” = an ounce of rhythm. Here’s what I do remember: a feeling of abject dread as I stood in the very back and watched the girls doing herkies and pikes. I promptly left the gymnasium and cried. For days. And I never went back. My friend made the team.

The next year my friends tried out for Drill Team and went on to become President and Vice President of that squad. During games I would show up in the locker room and help them with their costumes, pinning their Elvis hair with bobby pins and shaking the wrinkles from their spandex. I truly felt in my element – valued, of service and appreciated.

I could tell you a million other stories just like that one that occurred over the years, but let’s fast forward to 2009 when I took a job managing Lissa Rankin’s first book tour for What’s Up Down There? Over a period of a year or so I began to manage the behind-the-scenes of her entire online empire and in 2011 she referred me to another client Mike Robbins. On our first phone call he asked me why I wanted to work with him and I said something along the lines of “My passion is to support and lift up online business visionaries.” Mike never told me in that moment, but he didn’t quite believe me. We’ve talked about this a number of times over the past few years and each time he’s told me that he knew that there was something more for me than being behind the scenes supporting others. Truth be told, when I helped him with his third book Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way, he’s the one who gave me the initial inkling for my Book Shaman practice.

Just last week I was hiking with my dear friend & Good Vibe Coach, Jeannette Maw, and we were having a conversation about my experience on Martha Beck’s ranch with horse whispering. I told her of how I had just instinctively taken charge and rounded up some wild horses and we got to talking about support roles versus leadership roles. In that short chat, Jeannette had given me permission to look for evidence of where my old story was no longer true and that there was plenty of evidence of my own leadership over the years – in college, in work situations and in my own business.

Ever since I started noodling my Story Shape Shifting & Memoir Writing program, I’ve been questioning every story I’ve ever told; every story that comes up for me through my thoughts and my future-tripping and I’ve realized that I can find evidence on either side of every story. The question is which one will serve me in my life for my highest good?

I’ll tell you… right now it feels a lot more scrumptious to find all my evidence of leadership over the years, than to look at all the support I’ve given. Don’t get me wrong, being of support to others certainly served me for a long while and now, as I step out onto a bigger entrepreneurial stage, it doesn’t any longer. Just like that. I get to choose which story to tell now.

New Story:

I’m an amazing leader.

Which stories are you digging around looking for evidence to support? Is your current story truly serving you? And… if you’re longing to become a master storyteller, do check out my new program, applications are piling in since I’ve extended the deadline and I’m so excited for myself and the women who are saying YES! I could pee my pants.

P.S. If you’d like to hear me and Kristine Carlson, of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff fame, dish on the power of story and legacy, click here. It was such a power hour and a deep and beautiful conversation.

Shape-Shifting Your Story

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I have an invitation for you.  But, first…

Whether we realize it or not, our lives revolve around stories and have done so since our cave painting days.

Picture it: Cave peeps hunkered down around a blazing fire situated in the middle of the dirt floor, gesticulating wildly about the day’s hunt while gnawing on cave lion drumsticks and wiping their greasy fingers on their loincloths.  The Shaman crouches alone in the corner capturing the story with images on the cave wall.

We are a people who exists by story.

I believe that story is everything. I believe that story shapes us – our past, our present and our future. I believe that story is integral to every aspect of our lives and there isn’t a moment in “time” when we’re not telling story. We relate to others through their stories as well.

Even our present thought in this moment is a story that we’re telling ourselves, albeit a short one. Perhaps back 30,000 years ago or so, one cave boy’s story was, “Me be trampled by mammoth if I leave my furs.” Was he a bit of an agoraphobe? Yes. Did the other cave kids sprinkle guano in his gruel when he wasn’t looking? Probably. Was he telling himself a story? Absolutely. Was it true? Likely not. 

The story you tell can make or break you and it determines the course of your life, as well as your level of happiness or unhappiness, as the case may be.

The Stories of Our Past:

We are constantly retelling our past stories – whether to ourselves, to those we’ve just met, or to those who’ve experienced them with us (or… to those who’ve already heard them a hundred times before.) Oftentimes, they morph into something that may not even be real. I once had a step-dad who was a tad warped. When I was in 7th grade or so I brought my report card home – all A’s and one B. I was so proud that the miniature frogs on my white turtleneck sleeve were all a blur from my frantically waving it through the air in front of him. His reaction wasn’t exactly what I had anticipated and he scoffed and berated me for that lone B. From that morning forward, he would grab up our vinyl soundtrack to the Wizard of Oz and play “If I Only Had a Brain”, on repeat,  until I left for school. Suffice it to say, I worked REALLY hard in school and still I felt dumb. I worried my grades like a starving cave bear must have worried a hive full of honey back in the day. And for many, many years I told that story to anyone who would listen. Fast forward thirty years to a pizzeria when I met my ex step-dad for dinner with the rest of the family. About ten minutes into our grub, he proceeded to tell the folks at the table how whip smart I was as a kid and what good grades I received. I sat there flabbergasted and choking on my slice of pepperoni pie. What different stories each of us told, though we had lived in the same time and space together. I’m sure you can imagine my shock in realizing that the story I’d been telling for the past thirty-odd years was a myth. While I had gotten over that experience many years before through deep forgiveness work and twisting it toward the positive ( hey, I was nominated for Valedictorian at the age of forty due to my tenacity, which I firmly believe was gained from this experience ), it shaped my reality for a long time in ways I wasn’t even aware of. It reminds me of Mark Twain’s brilliant words, “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

If we become stuck in that painful story of our past we suffer and that is made manifest through troubles in our relationships, our health, our finances, our mental well-being and… Every. Other. Area. Of our lives. It colors the world around us and it most definitely shapes our current reality.

The Stories of Our Present:

There are a couple different present stories that we tell. Certainly we relay story when someone asks, “How was your day?” or when we describe our loathsome trip to the DMV where we had to sacrifice our first born to renew our driver’s license. But we also tell stories of our present through our thoughts. Our thoughts are simply a microcosm of story. Mini-stories, if you will. No so long ago I was running the story, “I’m never going to meet friends like me in Utah.” I played that story like Pa Ingalls played his fiddle = often, in the dark of the night, and to the rousing applause and rhythmic feet-stomping of my inner critic. And for three years I sat in my beautiful house every evening, eating buttered noodles and asparagus and watching, you guessed it, Little House on the Prairie. It took me rewriting my story, leaving the noodles and getting out of the  house before I did indeed meet some very like-minded, lovely people here – folks that have become dear to me.

The Stories of Our Future:

We tell stories of our future too and these are often told through our imagination, daydreaming, and… the ever-evil future-tripping. The stories we tell of our future can be told in only two ways: through the filter of love or through the filter of fear. I have such a vibrant story written in my head about when the first novel of my trilogy is published.

A synopsis: My publisher brings me to New York and I go down to the newsstand the morning of my book’s release and there is a raving review in the New York Times. Within weeks the book hits #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for fiction and stays there for forty-two weeks. It quickly becomes an international bestseller and the foreign rights sell like hotcakes. My second and third book come out within two years and are even more successful than the first. Millions of dollars flow to me from book deals and Guillermo del Toro reaches out about making a movie. Philip Pullman invites me to tea to discuss the work and we get into an in depth philosophical conversation about writing, the role of religion and the history of story. YUM!

Future stories can be so luscious, so expansive, and so full of joy that they make your toes curl.

Or they can feel absolutely dreadful…

When we choose to tell future stories from a place of fear we experience the opposite of joy and we often feel extreme anxiety as we tell them. In fact, I believe anxiety disorders are, in part, a future story set on repeat that includes doom and devastation and we’re playing the star role in the impending catastrophe. Let’s say I am telling a story about tornadoes. Mainly that I will die every time a strong gust comes. Each time the wind blows I am miles into the future picturing my home swooped up in a funnel, less elegantly than Dorothy’s, for sure. My mind quickly spirals into a horror story where I am maimed and pulled fifty thousand feet into the air and dropped. On a wooden picket fence. In Africa. Scary, no?

Can you feel the difference between these two future stories?

  • It’s super hard to get a book published traditionally these days. Writers definitely can’t quit their day jobs. Most writers suffer hundreds of rejections. The only chance I have is to self-publish and give copies to my five closest friends and my family members who are still walking this earth.
  • When I publish my memoir with Random House, I’m going to hit the New York Times bestseller list, win a Pulitzer and I will be offered multiple book deals.

Which story feels better to you? Do you notice what types of stories you’re typically telling? It takes but a moment on Facebook for me to tell what types of present and future stories my friends are telling. Those friends that are talking about how tired they are, how awful their day was, how miserable everything is, those are horror stories for sure. And, daily, there’s usually lots of evidence to support their stories.

And… we all have stories around money, around health, around relationships, around our work, etc… – past, present and future – and, unfortunately, we don’t often spend much time examining the stories we’re telling in each of these areas of our lives.

The Illusion of Time and Rewriting Your Story

But we can rewrite our story – past, present and future – at any time. I believe, like Albert Einstein, that time is an illusion. Einstein said that the “psychological origin of the concept of time… is undoubtedly associated with the fact of ‘calling to mind,’ as well as with the differentiation between sense experiences and the recollection of these.”‘ And, to boot, Einstein thought that, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”  Further, he said, “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” Bear with my here, lest you think I’m nuts. My theory is that time is an illusion because we can alter our past, present and future based on the stories we tell. Mix in deliberate creation too – if our thoughts are mini-stories informing our lives, if thoughts become things, as they say – then we can simply change our stories. THAT, for me, is what makes time an illusion or makes time malleable because we can change the past, present and future just based on the stories we tell about them. We can “call to mind” something different.

Stories can and do change. In fact, fables, myths, fairy tales, even ancient texts – all have changed in their retelling. Some were altered through translation error, while others were just flat out altered to fit the times. Still others have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, think of the fisherman’s famed story of how big his catch was and how it increases over time. Even the bible has changed as translations altered it and new authors contributed to the work hundreds of years later. As it is with our stories, we ourselves are translators and often we don’t quite know how to speak the language for our highest good or we just aren’t sure how to tell a better story of ourselves or we’re just flat out stuck in the old stories that no longer serve us.

The Call to Adventure

The words that you’ve just read are the culmination of the past eight months of my life, my heart and my soul. I’m officially launching my Story Shape Shifting & Memoir Writing Program today, so if you found yourself lit up and a bit tingly, please read my full invitation here. Perhaps you’ll join me in writing your memoir and rewriting your past, present and future stories in order to create a whole, happy and thriving next chapter.

Dear Women, Enough with the “I’m Sorry”

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I went to the grocery store a few weeks ago. I needed a package of Almond Joy pieces and some celery. (Don’t judge.)

I had taken one of those little mini carts, just in case I got a hankering in the chocolate aisle. Upon returning it, I was met by a lovely woman unloading her groceries from her own itty bitty cart.  As I approached, she looked down and muttered, “I’m sorry.”

I uttered my cheerfully automated, “No worries,” pushed my cart to the side of hers, and pulled my bag of bliss from the cart.

And then I stopped.

Why was she sorry? She wasn’t in my way. She wasn’t even near to being in my way. And… even if she had been in my way, I would need to wait. She was there first. I’m not one of those creepy apes on 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was in that moment when I realized that she was apologizing for her very existence.

Maybe you think I’m exaggerating.

I don’t think so. It seems to me that women are constantly apologizing for just BEing. My rote “No Worries” made me realize that I’m so completely oversaturated by these occurrences that it doesn’t even phase me and I’m constantly responding with, “No worries” (a.k.a. = “It’s okay that you exist.”) To a dozen. women. a. day.

Holy shitballs!

Since I’ve had this epiphany, I’ve been hearing “I’m sorry” for weeks. It’s been like a symphony – from the woman at Target browsing for a new book as I stood next to her; from the gal at 7-11 searching for a sugar fix as I searched for more Almond Joy pieces; from another woman just trying to get out of the bakery that I was about to walk in to.

And… I just don’t commonly hear this phrase from men. Not that it NEVER happens, but in my experience it only happens about 1% of the time. In fact, just yesterday as I walked into the grocery store, a burly dude in Crossfit paraphernalia with three carts full of what I can only imagine were protein powder and bananas took his ever-lovin’ sweet time blocking six of us from being able to grab a cart and not a peep came out of him. Ten minutes later a line of twelve rushed for the carts as he strode past with forty plus bags on each arm.

Typically, I only hear men tell me they’re sorry when they actually have something to be sorry about.

So what is this, dear women? Aside from an apology for our very existence? Are we all hanging on to the adages of our childhood, “Be nice,” “Apologize,” “Say you’re sorry, Melanie, that’s not how little girls act.”  I don’t have a definitive answer, but I’ve caught myself apologizing all over town these past few weeks, despite myself. How many apologies have I uttered in my lifetime? I bet I can’t count that high.

And… don’t get me wrong, I’m all for good manners. Saying “thank you” and “please” and not being that creepy ape I mentioned earlier, but apologizing for book browsing or sugar fixes should just never happen. Ever.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, why do you think women are so quick to say “I’m sorry” when it’s clearly not necessary? Any theories? Any experience of this yourselves?

Aside from helping me to figure this one out, I challenge each and every one of you to stop saying you’re sorry. Unless you accidentally punch someone wearing Crossfit gear in the groin, then an “I’m Sorry” might be in order.

Maybe.

Books, Happiness & “10,000 Hours”

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I’m afraid to write this blog post. I’ve worked it, and re-worked it, and re-worked it a gazillion times. For two weeks. It just doesn’t sound tortured, no matter how much I edit. My usual angst over… whatever… is gone. My writing flows when I’m suffering… over a break-up, a spiritual crisis, a stubby toenail. I alluded to this issue in one of my last blogs When Things Are Just Too Good.

I’m fucking happy. Almost every area of my life – my relationship, my work, my creativity, my family – all of it, is just as smooth as Nutella. Some days I feel like I’m going to burst wide open, like a tabby kitten in a microwave, because I’m finally doing work that I’ve spent my entire life preparing for. My Book Shaman business is forming and flowing in such a magical way that I wonder if I’ve actually had my sticky fingers in any of it, or if the Universe cooked it all up by itself as I sat there squeeing and swooning.

It’s tough to write that. I have this belief that folks don’t really want to hear how well things are going for you. Hell, sometimes, even when I’m blissful, when someone asks, “How are you doing?” I’ll say, “Okay.” I wouldn’t want to smear my joy all over them, especially if I know things aren’t going so well in their lives. I feel folks would rather know that my health is a crap sandwich on rye and I’ve made about three girl friends in the two years that I’ve lived back in Utah. But… frankly, I don’t care about those things, they just can’t diminish how awesome I feel about the good stuff.

I’ve been gnawing on the words of a friend of mine for months. It’s a process very similar to that of my lil Yorkie, So-Kr8z, as he chaws, repositions and commences chomping and slobbering all over his prize piece of steer pizzle. The words were these, “You know, when you find your true path, you discover that every little quirky thing about you makes you perfectly suited for the task at hand that leads you to your destiny.” With those words, I realize I may have had my hand in a lot of this after all.

Case in Point:

My very first memory of myself was hiding behind my dad’s ratty, brown recliner surrounded by twenty-some Walt Disney books. They were hardbound and glorious and I wish I still had them, even with their crayon scribblings. I loved those books way more than any of my toys or baby dolls, even more than my Baby Alive who pissed her pants on cue.

My love affair with reading continued as I grew. My step-father, a number of years later, wasn’t fond of the Nancy Drew books I was obsessed with and would require that I read a history book of some type and give him a written report. The history books were big, heavy and dry and I loathed them. Little did he know that they were just large enough to conceal Nancy and the sexy Hardy Boys inside their pages.

I spent many an hour at the library of whatever town I lived in at the time. I could describe to you the layout and smell of libraries all over Wyoming. A true gift. It was in the Campbell County Public Library where I received my sex education by sneaking a copy of Wifey by Judy Bloom off the shelf and reading it in its entirety in a day.  My most fervently longed for Christmas gift was the box set of the Little House on the Prairie series bound in canary yellow. I’ve never wished for a present harder before or since. I still have them.

As an adult my house is chock full of books. I have standing bookshelves and a half dozen floating bookshelves. There are books in every room. I am a book hoarder. When I left my marriage of ten years and moved across country I took with me a single twin mattress, my clothing, two bookshelves, and thirty boxes of books. I have over six hundred titles that I’ve kept over the years all catalogued into an app on my iPhone in alphabetical order by author. There are over a hundred titles that I haven’t read yet that are categorized on my “To Be Read” shelves. My Amazon Wish List is thirteen pages long with books that I started adding back in 2000. I keep a book journal, complete with a grading system, of every book I’ve ever read.

When I was a senior in high school my grades were poor. I’d received straight A’s the year before and was the English teacher’s pet. In 12th I was placed in college English, but I just didn’t have the gumption to apply myself that year. I don’t recall that anything specific was happening in my life, just that I didn’t care. In order to graduate, my college English teacher required that I read nineteen novels in order to graduate. This was like asking a Canadian goose to suffer by flying.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at the age of seven. I’m not sure which came first, the reading or the writing. There are some who aren’t sure what their life purpose is, but that’s never been an issue in my life. It’s always come back to the writing. I started out by penning stories about witches with carbuncles. I tried my hand at a few love stories as a teenager, but my real passion revealed itself when I started reading young adult fantasy in my late teens.

I took countless Creative Writing courses and I read just about every book ever written since the beginning of time about the writing process. The phrase most used in my life is Richard Rhodes’s, “Apply ass to chair.” Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Stephen King’s On Writing are my most cherished tomes. I majored in Creative Writing in college. I’ve absolutely bathed in everything writing since I can remember.

Not to mention my obsession with all things writerly. In fourth grade, me and my BFF (also a writer) spent hours in stationery stores buying paper, pens, stickers, and notecards. Screw the toy stores. We were obsessed.  Crap, I still get a thrill when I walk into an Office Max. I’d rather shop for paper than clothing.  I’ve been searching for the perfect pen for my entire life – I do not jest. It must feel comfortable in my hand, have a medium tip, in blue, and it must flow flawlessly, none of that skidding across the page leaving miniscule white spaces in my cursive.

So what does it all mean? Well, I never dreamed that my 10,000 hours, of Malcolm Gladwell fame, would turn into my work. I find myself knowing, inherently – like I know Mother Theresa was kind – how to do this Book Shaman work. It’s in my blood and sweat and urine. I always thought my 10,000 hours were just for my own novel.

This is all to say, don’t limit yourself by just what you can dream up. Dream. By all means, dream, but, just know that the Universe is much more clever. You just have to put in the hours.

And things are going swell. Happiness abounds.

(No kittens were harmed in the writing of this blog post. I love kittens. Truly.)