March 2024: Writing as Healing

During a Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago, I had a conversation with my friend and sister-in-law Jen about my desire to take my career in a more personally fulfilling direction. Change can happen at various stages in all of our lives. It provokes fear, which is not only a perfectly normal experience, but a mark of growth! For me, this new horizon arrived exactly 8 years after the founding of Lucinda Literary. I loved the work of being an editor, dealmaker, and partner to my clients. But I hadn’t yet united my earliest loves of creative writing and performance—the work of being an author, not merely advising them.

I struggled to see clearly what was missing. But Jen did immediately. Without hesitation, she said, “I know exactly what you should do… teach. And one day, you’ll write a book, encompassing all that you have learned!”

I never believed her.

Ironically, and like so many of you in this community, I was already a teacher but I hadn’t seen it that way. I was meeting with small groups of writers over zoom, advising them on what agents looked for, what might be missing from their book proposals, guiding them toward the right idea for their book. Because I lead a company, I had also been a teacher to my team members for years.

I felt a click in my heart, signaling a shift toward a new direction. Two years later, I wrote a book. A year later, I received a book deal. A year after that, Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author was published by Hay House.

Because I have coached so many aspiring authors writing in various genres over the past few years—novelists, memoirists, and self-help authors alike—I know that many of you have felt this click of the heart. But there’s a key and recurring issue that blocks you. It often begins with a kind of imposter syndrome—that your book won’t be good enough, or that you don’t have anything original to say—disguised as a problem of time. There is never enough time to write a book; we have to make it! Later, it becomes a challenge of staying accountable to this most important goal. 

But what if we are thinking about it all wrong? What if our most productive breakthroughs in writing came as easily as our breath, from out of our natural energy, voice, and wisdom?

I am using today’s platform to present a unique workshop offered by my sister-in-law and friend Jen, specifically tailored for writers to explore the practice of tapping into their creative flow through channel writing. This 6-session workshop beginning Thursday, April 11th and ending May 16th will combine independent writing with meditation and group discussion. I believe the many Mind Body Spirit writers in our community will find that it gives them the productivity, accountability, and support they need.

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Buy the Get Signed Book