The Art of the "Self-Focused First Draft"

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”- Barbara Kingsolver

For years, I sighed with longing when I read this passage by Barbara Kingsolver. How fortunate she was to have such a healthy ego! How privileged she was to be the woman who could enter her writing room knowing that she had the power to author books that would sell. Maybe someday when I grew up I could be so free.

And so, I dedicated myself to looking over my own shoulder for a good five years. I hunched over the keyboard and scanned the web for clues about how to wear just the right chains for just long enough. Eventually, I prayed, I'd earn the right to tell the stories that mattered to me.

Because I thought it was part of paying my dues, I forced myself to choke down the “how to create viral content” KoolAid (even though I distrusted those marketing “gurus” and it killed my writer's soul).

Because I was so afraid of being revealed as a fraud, I avoided “real” writers at all cost. It seemed smarter to maintain a healthy distrust for artists and other free spirits who took Kingsolver at her word and created with wild abandon on the other side of the studio door. After all, they were the lucky ones. There was no use envying them their freedom when I still had dues to pay and chains to wear.

What changed? What made me finally realize that Kingsolver was right and that she is speaking to anyone who feels called to write at any point in the creative journey? I certainly didn’t “make it” using all those marketing formulas and trying to please the crowd. I dropped those chains because I had to.

Finally, I realized it was true: I didn’t have anything of worth to offer if I didn’t uncover the story that mattered to me. I was starving my creative passions and I wasn’t building a sustainable business. I was miserable and my writing wasn't connecting with anyone.

Permission to Write the Self-Focused First Draft

I completely believe that the stories that matter need to matter to you first.

You can’t stop there, of course - not if you want to turn those stories into online content that builds a community of people who want to invest in your vision. But before you start looking over your shoulder and before you start looking into the eyes of the people you want to serve, you must connect to your own stories.

Right now, I am developing a course called the You, Your Stories, and Your Audience. As you understand how to craft stories that matter to the people you wish to serve, you also learn the art of the Self-Focused First Draft.

Your SFFD will evolve into final draft that transforms your readers’ perspectives and compels them to take action. But before it’s asked to do anything so grand it’s rooted in exactly what you have to say. You'll learn that before you can dedicate yourself fully to anyone else, including your reader, you need to practice a healthy selfishness and tend to your own stories. 

This course is for emerging thought leaders, especially therapists, healers, and coaches, who wants to build a business through blogging today and develop an online presence that will get them a book contract and big time speaking engagements in the future.

Get all the course details and save your seat for the May 2 launch!

Crafting Vision Into Story

“I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.” ― Jeanette Winterson, The Powerbook

A fresh green force thrums within me. It’s at once the rush of the ocean between two rocks and the ecstasy of spring in the narrow passage of a daffodil stem.

It is life. It is creation. It is the riotous movement of energy in a conscious, interconnected world. It is peace and wildness, a great force and wisest surrender.

There’s a hint of death and the inevitable cycle renewal in this celebration of aliveness too, but I’m not lingering on that right now.

This great movement and power, it terrifies me as much as it excites me. Despite my dreams and my ambitions and my yearning to leave a creative, benevolent mark on this world, I fear this great force. To give this much, to be capable of so much would disrupt the relatively quiet, predictable existence I have become so used to.

This vision of an internal sea and rising spring is just that: a visualization thrown against the screen of my mind. And yet, it’s also very real. Or, at least it can lead to very real things.

When I agree to allow that green swell of energy to be real enough to move me, life will expand and grow and change. It would be inconceivable that I could continue to eke out my life like a resource in short supply.

What a lovely picture. Now where’s the reader’s story in all that?

Alone, these musings paired with a Jeanette Winterson passage don’t have the force of story. If I’m lucky, I may offer up just enough poetry and inspiration to keep you interested, dear reader. In this noisy world of clickbait, the emphasis on “news you can use,” and ad copy structured to appeal to the bits of the brain that can be manipulated into action, I’m not counting on it. Especially because you come to me for stories of entrepreneurship and motherhood and writing advice, not abstract snapshots from my meditation cushion.

To really make you care, to make this into a story you can see and feel and find yourself inside, I would need to anchor you in something other than the rushing river of universal life force energy. You need to follow my journey, but how?

Slip that vision into a real life context

To feel like my story matters to you, perhaps you need to watch this vision interrupt my daily life. You need to see this experience loom larger than all my excuses about sleep deprivation and the incessant interruptions of children and the madness of trying to run a family and a business and a creative existence.

The story’s conflict might come when I realize I can no longer collapse into my limitations - not if I want to honor this magical energy and live abundantly. You could accompany me as I fight against my old ways of numbing myself - red wine, chocolate, and a good Netflix binge. The big climax may be an argument with my husband since we tend to escape to the couch together and it’s always hard on a marriage when one partner commits to transformation.

And the resolution of my story (hopefully!) comes in the form of a creative triumph and a deeper dedication to this brilliant life force.

As always, ask yourself if this story is even worth telling (on your blog, in this moment)

That sort of story I outline above is more complicated to tell - at least if you want to make it a worthwhile read! And anyway, in my case, it would be fiction rather than memoir because I haven’t lived the story and earned the right to tell it all.

Then again, there’s a risk in waiting til there’s a beginning, middle, and end. The transcendent moment that started it all may start to fade. When I juxtapose the mundane details and the marital discord and the spiritual download, the whole thing may seem artificial and forced and even irrelevant.

Today, I’m describing this flash of insight because putting it on the page makes it real for me. I am publishing it because this #365StrongStories project gives me a platform to share something that’s personal and a little bit outside the lines of what I am “supposed” to write about as a writing coach.

Depending on the nature of your work and the goal of your own blog, however, your own a storyless story might find a better home in a Facebook post or in an email to a friend.

But please, don't hold the best of yourself in reserve

That said, if you’ve got something tremendous bubbling up inside, don’t hoard it and save it until all the magic leeches out of it. Even if it feels merely curious, give it a chance to become something that matters.

Dare to birth your big, brave, “this one burns the old script” ideas. Otherwise, we're left to wander mostly comatose in the world of dull, safe, useful blog posts. The forces that keep us small and miserly will win.

Do remember: “The only selfish life is a timid one.”

Resonanting to Our Imperfections

My eyes were bright this morning. Something more energizing than coffee was doing its work and I felt fully present in the circle. I refused to give in to the fatigue that nips constantly at my heels. These chances to be a sovereign being, responsible for myself alone, supporting this group as a peer and a student are rarest gems to me and I wasn’t going to squander a moment. Finally, at the end of this day, however, the sleepiness drags at my eyes and my fingers and I cannot begin to do the experience any justice.

This healing work we do at the Sacred Center Mystery School defies story. It is designed to lift us out of the typical elements of the human condition - even the addiction to story that is a hallmark of our humanity.

As a storyteller, I have struggled with this paradox. Am I peddling narrative crack at my day job and then skipping off to healing school like a sweet little hypocrite trying to leave her stories behind?

In class, we strive to see and touch a dimension that’s beyond individual drama. We seek to fly above and dive below the swell of emotion that drowns out the voices of the divine and the beacons of greater Truth.

And yet, we gather in this counsel of advancing souls as beautifully imperfect people. We’re not trying to shed our humanness. Instead, we ask it to resonate through us, from cells to spirit. When we embrace who we are we’re free enough to evolve.

In such a space, we come together to own our stories, not to be owned by them. In such a place, there’s ample room for stories that empower and there’s all the time in the world to tell the stories that connect us all together.

There's a Reason They Call It a Mystery School

It’s time for “class.” At home, that’s all that needs to be said about mama’s quarterly disappearing acts. “Healing class” suffices in most casual conversations, especially in professional circles where I’m known as a writer and a writing coach, not as an energy medicine practitioner.

Only amongst the tribe of fellow healers and seekers do I dare call it what it is - a Mystery School. Four times per year a community gathers to journey into the Greater Reality, to practice a sort of magic, and to heal the wounds that keep us from participating fully and joyfully in the adventure of life.

The Sacred Center Mystery School has been at the heart of my spiritual practice and my self-care routine since 2007. It’s my church and my spa and my therapy couch all mixed together and decorated with crystals and feathers and sacred tools called Chumpi stones.

Ask me what it is I do there, and I am not likely to get too specific. I suppose that is because it is a private practice as full of intimate details as another person’s devotion to prayer might be.

Then again, what more do I have to say considering I co-wrote the book on the subject? Though I don’t talk of it often, I worked with my teacher Eleanora Amendolara to write the guide to her signature healing system, Chumpi Illumination.

This work isn’t a secret, but it is an unfolding mystery. I go to the Sacred Center to resolve the conflicts in my life - that should make for lots of great stories, right? Not yet. Not yet.

For me, this place is the setting for stories stories that need to be held close and told in whispers. Their time may come, but not yet.

Sorry, Shame: This Mama Is Too Busy Healing Her Girl to Sip Your Poison

We didn’t quite make it a year between visits to the walk-in emergency clinic. There are three things I have learned from the early morning trip to have two-year-old fingers checked out after a door slamming incident:

1. Telling personal stories on a blog means never having to guess when past major life events occurred. They also lend you strength you may have forgotten you had.
2. My little one is accident prone, tough as nails, and sweeter than I thought possible. My big one never means to hurt anyone and her feelings may be more wounded than her sister's digits if we're not careful.
3. I’m still woefully and beautifully imperfect. And I am still ok with that. Shame need not apply when I'm busy healing my baby and keeping the big girl from falling into the shame spiral.

Here's an updated 2016 version of that story from last year:

One of my girls had an accident this weekend. Though it was terrifying at the time, it ended up being relatively minor. Now I can claim a parenting merit badge my mom never earned: held my daughter as she got stitched up x-rayed and told she'd merely lose a pinkie nail.

It was an accident, yes, but it could have been prevented. I could have had my hands on the kids instead of sitting an inch beyond an arm’s length away lying in bed three feet away, utterly exhausted by another night of tag teaming sleepless children. I could have said “no, honey a five year old isn’t big enough to carry her one year old sister yet.” screamed "no, you will not slam that door just because your sister is trying to come into the bathroom!"

But I didn’t.

And we ended up at the walk-in med center, covered in blood all swollen up – and sidewalk chalk and dirt from what was supposed to be a typical Saturday spent in a yard just awakening to spring still in pajamas, eyes full of sleep.

We’re so proud of our girl for healing so quickly and handling it all so well. And I’m pleased to report that I’ve emerged from shame’s shadows. Truthfully, the horrible guilt dissipated within twenty-four hours. (Likely that’s because much of the swelling did too). 

Truthfully, I skipped shame all together this time because a shamed mama isn't a strong, compassionate, in control of her emotions mama who teaches her girls to be same.

No longer blinded by self-recrimination, I can simply hold my little one tight, overcome with gratitude and rendered speechless by how precious she is to me (and by utter exhaustion).

Yes, gravity won sibling rivalry made us all losers in that split second, but I forgive myself.

I’ve decided that I am mother enough for my daughters – even if I’m woefully and beautifully imperfect.