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creativity planning & productivity writing

The Writing Road Trip – Update

April 3, 2022

Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me and I co-host The Writing Road Trip. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.

So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you information and inspiration for your writing journey:

The Writing Road Trip is an exciting collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.

The program has three components that we plan to keep cycling through so join us at any time. Join the email list to keep in touch with what’s available. Here are the three components!

  • We kick off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity, a two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing. 
  • Then we have a six-week Writing Road Map course that helps you zero in on your purpose and direction. We work on: creating your vision, getting in flow, mindset, creativity for the long-haul and sharing your work with the world. It helps you map the writing journey your way with the support of community.
  • The Writing Road Trip is a longer community program for extended support as you write featuring virtual writing retreats, community calls to check in on your writing progress and writing input as required based on what you need!

We are kicking off on the Writing Road Trip in May 2022! So get on the email list for the latest news as well as regular writing inspiration and tips from us.

Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:

Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube

The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.

Transcript of our conversation

Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.

Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.

Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.

So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.

Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?

Terri Connellan: We did.

I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.

I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.

Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.

Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.

And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.

I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.

Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely.

That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.

And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?

Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.

Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.

Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.

The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?

 My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.

Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.

But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.

And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.

So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.

But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.

And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.

Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.

Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.

Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.

Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.

Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?

Beth Cregan:

And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.

Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.

Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.

We hope you’ll join us!

You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
creativity planning & productivity writing

The Writing Road Trip – Share the journey

January 31, 2022

I’m joining forces with Beth Cregan of Write Away With Me to co-host The Writing Road Trip in 2022. Beth and I co-write together in the mornings virtually via Zoom. We’ve completed three books between us in 2021 and we’ve found community and partnership helps get writing happening and books written. So from this, we’ve shaped up exactly what helped us into an exciting new community writing program in 2022.

We kick off today 31 January! So join us. Get on our email list now and we’ll send you all the information and links to join in:

The Writing Road Trip is an exciting new collaboration for Beth Cregan and me. We have created exactly what we found worked when we faced the task of writing and completing our books together.

The program kicks off with a free writing challenge focusing on writing identity. This two week challenge helps you explore your relationship with writing and your unique writing identity. Whatever stage you are at in your writing journey, this is a powerful foundation for your writing for 2022. 

We want to challenge you, nurture your creativity and provide opportunities to connect with other writers in a positive and affirming community. 

Here’s what you need to know:

✍🏼 The Challenge goes from Monday 31 Jan to Friday 11 Feb.

✍🏼There are 6 x 30 minute live workshops Tues Wed Thurs each week.

✍🏼 Workshops are live at 7pm AEDT Sydney/Melb via Zoom + recorded.

✍🏼 Each workshop has a key focus, writing prompt & time to chat.

✍🏼 The private Facebook group is open for further connection & exploration.

✍🏼 The Challenge Workbook is ready for you to download.

Don’t forget to add us to your contacts so our emails land in your inbox.

The Challenge is free so connect with us, to get writing in 2022.

Sign up to get the info – link in bio or head to https://www.quietwriting.net/writingroadtripwaitlist

If you are already on our email list, then check out today’s email with all the Go Live links. DM us if you haven’t received it for any reason! We don’t want you to miss out.

Watch us chatting about the program here on YouTube

The transcript of the conversation is below if you prefer to read or read along.

Transcript of our conversation

Beth Cregan: Now just waiting. I think we’re going to get Terri up on screen any minute. There we go. We did it. So welcome to anybody who’s watching this live. And also to anybody who might catch up on this, on the replay. We’re so thrilled to have you here and you can tell by our smiles that we’re really excited to be spending this time and telling you what we’ve been planning over the last weeks and months. So I’m Beth from Write Away with Me.

Terri Connellan: And I’m Terri Connellan from Quiet Writing and it’s fantastic to be on Instagram live together. This is our first time popping on together and we’ve had a lot of laughs getting connected and things organised, but it’s great to be with you Beth, and to be sharing our story.

Beth Cregan: Exactly. And I think what we’d really like to start with is to tell you a little bit about how this program came to be, because we have developed something that comes from our experience of writing successfully together and finishing our books. And we’re hoping it will really inspire you to join us next year and take out your writing program.

So if we zoom back to the beginning of last year, I had a draft of a book and a publishing contract, and I was just beginning to restructure that book when COVID hit. And of course, all of our lives changed dramatically. And I was at home overwhelmed and anxious and really wondering how I was going to make my commitment of finishing this book.

Then it really became important to me, or it became obvious to me that I needed support. And I put out a call to writers I knew in my circle to see if anybody wanted to write in the mornings together online. And that was how Terri and I first connected. We knew each other, but that was how we connected in terms of our writing together. And other people came in and out of that group, but we hung in there, didn’t we Terri?

Terri Connellan: We did.

I think the fact that we were both writing books, like we both had a long haul writing project really kept us engaged with that support for each other.

I know for me, for my situation, I was writing two books at once. And I think when we connected, I was well through the draft of one and the other, I still had to do quite a lot of work on. So it was actually quite a hard slog at the time when we connected, because it was working through the editing when you’re going over and over and over drafts. And when I went through that process, it was quite challenging. So to have people who you can connect with really helps with that and getting up early and writing with you really helped to get that writing done. It was so much more fun.

Beth Cregan: Absolutely. That was my sense of it too. And now end of if that was somewhere in the midst of 2020, now we’re at the end of 2021. And I have my book now finished and going through its final edit with the publisher and Terri, tell everybody your great news too.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I was able to get two books finished at once. So ‘Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition‘ and accompanying workbook, which I worked on in conjunction and they were published by the kind press in September this year 2021 and that’s after four and a half, five years of writing. So yeah, it was fantastic to have that support to be able to finish that work. So, yeah. Thanks for being there. And it’s great to share our story.

Beth Cregan: And I think that it is the things that we learned during that time that helped us achieve our goals.

And it became, I think really obvious to both of us that we’d cracked a code that really made the difference for us and that we could then offer what we had learned to others to help them on their writing journey, to guide and support them.

I know for me, that time in the morning felt really sacred. It felt like a safe space. It felt like a creative space and it wasn’t just the opportunity to work and, and know that somebody was holding space with you at the same time and offering you that courage but I think it was just our conversations. We’d have a break and it was our conversations that made all the difference.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I think for me it was definitely that accountability of getting up early to write, but also very much the camaraderie around writing. So that ability to one, write together, but also just to stop and have conversations about what was hard, what was easy, what we were learning. We often think writing’s a really solitary process. Obviously there’s aspects of it that are, but there’s plenty of aspects of writing that are supported by being with other people. And, people talk about how lonely it is. It can be super lonely and I think having community on the journey can help us incredibly. So, yeah. So it’s like a magic sauce, Beth, that we want to share with others.

Beth Cregan: Yes, absolutely. And I know for me, it was the fact that there was somebody just ahead of me in the journey that made such a difference because the overwhelming part is that you don’t quite know. It’s an organic process and you don’t quite know how it’s going to come together. So just having you one step or two steps ahead meant that I had a path forming and it normalized what I was doing, the overwhelm, the fear that dealing with my inner critic, the resistance. It really normalized all of those things because I knew that you were feeling them too.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely.

That sense of, you’re not alone and it’s quite a normal part of the journey. Yeah, I think the idea of normalising, it’s really important. Also for me, I never went into any session or any times we were writing together without having a note pad or pencil beside me, where I was writing down a whole list: here’s a great podcast, here’s a great book.

And I know you recommended Anne Janzer’s The Writer’s Process. To me, that’s been such a fantastic inspirational book for my journey and for my sharing with others. So I think just sharing insights about writing and resources helped incredibly too. So it’s a whole lot of things, isn’t it?

Beth Cregan: Well, the combined resources was just an absolute bonus because I now have bookshelves and kindles full of things that I know you found helpful and no doubt you have the same experience because everybody finds their own, you know, they follow different people. They find their own magic in whatever resources they use. And then we had the chance to pull those together and share them, which was really fantastic.

Terri Connellan: So it might be time for us to share about what we’re thinking of or what we’re planning to offer all these great experiences that we’ve had. What we found was that from that we’re able to create a program that’s something that we wish we had while we were going through the process.

Beth Cregan: I think every time we’ve got together to work and dream up this program cause it’s been a Thursday afternoon burst of inspiration when we get together and do it. And every time I finish, I think, man, I wish I had this when I was writing or when I was doing this journey, because it’s exactly what I would have needed to help me along my way. So how about I start by just talking a little bit about the challenge.

The program will have three parts and we’re going to start with a live challenge. It will involve six free activities or workshops over two weeks. And that’s just to ride the energy of the new year, and get everybody thinking about what their writing goals might be for the year. How they feel as a writer, what is their writing identity as well as just inspire and spark imaginations and creativity. So that will involve lots of hands-on writing and interactive opportunities, which will be really fun way to start the program.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s called The Writing Road Trip, the whole program. The first part is really a bit of way-finding, like getting a compass, getting all the travel books out and deciding where you might go. But again, having fellow travellers, even at the early stage of the journey to have a chat about what you’re thinking about, how you feel about yourself as a writer, as Beth said, and then we thought we’d build on that with a six week more intensive course, which is a Roadmap. And that’s really about creating the shape of your project and what it might look like. So in that program, we’ll have a look at things like, what your purpose is, what your why is, what the steps might be, what do you want to do with what you write?

 My journey has been very much that, knowing what I want to do with it at the end, I needed to know a bit at the beginning or at least have some idea. Do you want to publish? How do you want to publish? And we’re talking in this, it could be a book, but it could also be blog project. It could be feature articles, series of feature articles, could be social media. It could be writing a course, any sort of writing. So in that six weeks Roadmap program, we’ll be looking at: what you want to do, where you might go, why it’s important to you, because one thing I’ve found, and I know you have too, Beth, is that knowing our why really helps us on the whole journey.

Beth Cregan: Yeah. And I love the imagery of the road trip because I think it was born out of a time when we were quite stationary with lockdown and road tripping was completely off the agenda.

But writing is a journey and creating any sort of project and finishing any sort of project, I think, is a transformational journey. So it feels so right to have that image as our starting point.

And then once we’ve done that six weeks together where we will really shape and map out where you’re going and what you want to do with your project, then we have a six month community. And in that community and program, that membership, you’ll have a chance to meet other writers, to work together, to be accountable to each other, to listen to other guest speakers who arecoming into that space, to share our resources.

So, not only will you have the opportunity to connect with our guests, but you’ll have a wide library of resources that we can share with you. And also, which I think will be really helpful because it’s what we have done. And we still do many mornings every week is to have virtual retreats where we come together and we’re online in our own space, but we’re working together and sharing what we’re doing, our goals and our intentions and carving out space, making that container to allow the writing to happen. So that to me is a really important part of this journey because I don’t think I realized until we started working together, Terri, just how I’ve given lip service to community, but I don’t think I really understood it. And now I really do see that that makes all the difference.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve often been envious of people who have writing groups and join together to to write. And particularly with the way things work now that we are perhaps not connecting as much or traveling across the world, or as you said, actually doing road trips as much, being able to connect virtually and write together, have community together and connect asynchronously as well as at the same time, it’s been absolutely perfect. And I know one of my clients said to me, I didn’t think I had time for a group program, I just wanted to get the writing done. And I think that’s, our tendency is to want to put our head down and just get the writing done.

But I think our experiences have taught us that to have connection to someone who knows what’s happening on the journey to talk through, when you get to the really difficult things, to be able to have a safe space to be heard, you don’t always have to solve the problems, but it’s just not having it rattling around inside your head can make a huge difference.

And I think we’ve both said without each other, we wouldn’t be where we are today with the projects that we’ve done. So that’s what we really hope to share with the community work. And yeah, that idea of being connected with creativity.

Beth Cregan: I think if you imagine writing as flow and we often talk about creative flow, I feel like community removes many of the obstacles. For me, it really allows the writing when you have that space to write, you actually use your time really productively, because you have a lot of your other needs met in that community space.

Terri Connellan: I think I’ve said to you before that, we’d get up early, six at the moment. If you’re not there and I get up early, I just faff around. It’s just amazing that having someone there, you know, we write for 25 minutes, we have a break. These are the sort of practices we can share with people. Another thing we’ve talked about doing is buddying people up potentially, if people are interested in this sort of experience we’ve had, because it’s made all the difference.

Beth Cregan: Yeah and I know we were talking this morning about the fact that we’re in the middle of a reno and our, Terri and my, writing time hasn’t been happening. And my rest of the day doesn’t feel the same and it is nowhere near as productive as having that regular routine. So it’s reminded me once again, that a writing practice is made up of so many elements that fit together. And once you get what’s right for you, what you need to move forward. So we hoping that you will be interested in joining us. We’re going to be kicking off at the end of Jan with our challenge, and you can be part of that free challenge and have the opportunity to come and work with us and see what it’s like to have that experience.

Terri Connellan: And so the first step today we’re opening the waitlist, which is really exciting. So inviting you to come on the Road Trip with us. So we’ve both popped the links in our bios and that waitlist information tells you about the program. There’s quite a lot of information there in that post if you have a look and then there’s an opportunity just to join our email list, which is a joint email list. Beth and I have our own businesses, our own email lists. This is a unique one, unique to Writing Road Trip. So we’ll just be sending information out about the Road Trip and, and writing inspiration tips to inspire you particularly about community.

Beth Cregan: And we would love you to join us and have an opportunity to be supported by the lessons that we’ve learned along the way to finish. You finished your two books and I think you’re nearly working on the third.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I am. Yeah, it’s happening in the background. So again, it’s whatever projects and it’s not genre specific. I think that’s something too we want to mention to people. We’re not going to be talking about say, novel writing specifically. But you could be writing a novel, it’s certainly a goal of mine next year. Mm. But whatever writing it is, we’re here to support you around the writing process generally, the community, the support. We’re both writing teachers by background. We’ve told you about ourselves in that landing page (waitlist page). I’m a coach and teacher and Beth also is mentoring and many years’ experience as a teacher. So together, we bring a fantastic skillset too. And of course everyone who joins brings their wisdom. That’s what I love about group programs. We met through a group program, didn’t we Beth?

Beth Cregan:

And we really feel like this will be a co-creation. We will set that structure up and use what we know in that space or share what we know in that space, but it really will be created with everybody and what they bring into that program as well, which is really exciting.

Terri Connellan: It is absolutely. So yes, we hope you’ll join us. So as I said, we’ll both put a post up today kicking off the waitlist. So any questions feel free to pop them in now, or we can pick them up on our respective Instagram profiles. So look forward to connecting with you and to going on a Road Trip with you, writing away.

Beth Cregan: Totally!. And have a great day and any questions, please shoot them our way. We’d love to answer them. And we’d love to see you on that wait list so that you can get more information as it comes into the world. Yeah. Bye.

Here’s a map of where the Writing Road Trip is going in 2022:

We hope you’ll join us!

You can get on the email list here and find our more about us and the program here:

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
wholehearted stories writing

Writing the way through – a wholehearted story

September 27, 2019

In this guest post, Sally Morgan shares her experience of writing the way through cycles and seasons to a wholehearted life. 

trusting the journey

This is the 22nd guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors! 

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I’m delighted to have Sally Morgan as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Sally and I met via Instagram and shared interests in creativity and writing. In this story, Sally shares how her writing practice has been a tool, process, support and safe place for stepping into wholehearted living. Read on!

writing the way through

Moving into writing

It’s a late-summer morning, still early, and I’m sitting on my patio writing. There’s a comforting weight to my journal, open on my lap, and my pen moves quickly across the page. I’m lost in the writing. This is how I start most days, with Morning Pages, writing at least three pages in longhand. It’s a process I’ve come to trust and value, a meditation of sorts.

It’s still cool on the patio this morning. There’s a hint of a breeze and a faint scent of the ocean. But the sky is a deep blue and the sun, when it filters through the trees, is already warm. I write it all down. The deep green of the cedars lit by early-morning sun. The rich aroma of my morning coffee. The tok-tok-tok of a raven watching me somewhere in the trees. This noticing grounds me, helps me move fully into the writing.

trusting the journey

Reminders of cycles

It’s lush out in my backyard, still green, despite the lack of rain. The cedars and firs tower overhead, shading salal and sword ferns and an almost accidental patch of lawn. It’s a wild and unruly space, a perfect place for writing. As I write, I notice that the ferns are a deeper, duskier shade now; they’ve lost their springtime sheen and brightness. Behind them, the creamy blooms of the ocean spray bushes have dried to deep golden, dying away for another year. And now, all around me, I see descent. Dying off. The inevitability of fall. This reminder of cycles.

There was a time when I was less attuned to these subtle signs, when the weeks dropped away until suddenly the holidays were over and it was September. But my writing practice has given me a deeper sensing of the seasons. I watch for the first pale sword-fern stems poking up in spring, the clutched spirals slowly unfurling into bright green fronds. I notice as the fronds take on that darker, dustier hue as summer progresses, how the outer fronds brown and then die off into September. It’s one small way I’m more deeply attuned to the seasons and to the cyclical nature of our lives.

Being aware of seasons

As I write this, I am nearing the end of a short season of rest after a long, full season of houseguests and parties and important celebrations. I’ve become more aware of these seasons and of how I can best embrace each one. During the season of houseguests, I was able to throw myself fully into the fray, into visiting and day trips and shocking quantities of wine. I knew there would be time for rest when our company was gone. There would be time to slow down and step away, time again to drink water. When I am journalling, I am in tune with these cycles in my life, and I can give myself permission to fully embrace what is.

I’ve also come to understand that there are other, overlapping kinds of seasons. After three years of writing nearly non-stop and under deadline at work, I’m not writing much for myself at the moment. There was a time when I would have felt panicked by this, but not now. Now I recognize the bigger patterns, the pushing and then the need for rest. The immersion and the need for time away.

writing the way through

Writing as a safe place

I haven’t always written Morning Pages. I came first to a journalling practice more than twelve years ago, as a way to save myself. In June of that year, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In September, my then-husband announced he was leaving our marriage. I had to write. I was compelled to write, and in that time period, I wrote as if my life depended on it. I hadn’t read Julia Cameron at that point, and I suspect that The Artist’s Way was not the book I needed in that season. But I knew Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the BonesFreeing the Writer Within and I followed the rules she laid out in the book: Keep your hand moving. Lose control. Go for the jugular. They were rules that served me well as my life spiralled out of control.

In that season I fell apart. I clung to my friends and to my three little boys like a woman drowning. My journals were filled with disbelief and grief and anger. But in those journals, I found a safe place to descend into despair, a place where I could immerse myself and fully experience my sadness. It was a painful and necessary period in my life. A descent and a dying.

Healing and inner wisdom

And then in late spring, I began to notice the first pale stems of healing. The slow unfurling of hope. The first tentative steps as I began putting myself back together. It was a slow process, and cyclical, one that has taken many years. In that spring, I began to see the learning I needed to take from my experience. I began to see the possibility on the other side of divorce, and to craft a new vision for myself and my little family. For the first time, I sensed freedom and felt hope. There was still much to face – the legal separation, my father’s impending death – but I was beginning to trust my strength and my resilience.

And I was beginning to trust my inner wisdom. By that point, I’d filled a number of journals, and somewhere along the way, a calm, loving voice had appeared in my writing, a voice far wiser than mine. You’re going to be okay, it told me. Your boys are going to be okay. As I wrote, I began listening for that voice, actually asking for guidance. What am I meant to be learning here? What do I need to remember as I move forward? Will I really be okay?

Writing the way through

Just about the time that I was getting back on my feet after the separation, my dad died. In many ways, this was a greater loss for me than my marriage and I expected that my journal would once again be my refuge. But I was shocked to find that I couldn’t write about my dad. I wrote about my concerns for my boys and for my mum, and about all sorts of other tangential things, but my sadness was too deep. Suddenly though, poems began flowing out of me. I’d never really written poetry before in my life, but I think that because I’d been writing so consistently, I was able to connect with an intuitive, deeply emotional part of myself in a period when there was no logical way to approach or express my grief. Again I cycled into descent, and again, I wrote my way out.

In the years since, I’ve fully committed to the practice of journalling, recognizing that it is the most effective way for me make meaning of my experience and – eventually – to grow from it. I’ve written through further heartbreak, through further challenges, and through the many transitions and seasons of my life. Journalling has also helped me to trust my writing voice enough to follow other creative urges, and I’ve continued to write poetry, as well as a couple of unpublished novels, a blog, and a self-published memoir.

writing the way through

Trusting in writing practice

The greatest gift of my journalling practice, though, came during a three-year period when I lost my speaking voice. During that time, I could only talk in a breathless, squeaky little whisper, making most of my daily interactions difficult if not impossible. In that frightening time, as I underwent scores of tests to figure out what was wrong with me, my journal was the place where, if I listened to my wisest self, I could write myself off the edge. It was also the place where I figured out the self-care practices and boundaries I needed in my life to prevent this from happening again. And, of course, it was the one place in my life where I could trust in my voice. Even though my speaking voice was unreliable, I could trust in my writing and in my writing practice.

Over the years, my faith in this practice has deepened to a place where beginning a new journal is a sacred act. I use the first few pages to record gentle reminders about what I need to be my healthiest self, things like stillness, solitude, and self-compassion. I also have a list of what matters most, because for me it’s easy to overcommit. Finally, I include quotes to guide me and reminders from the previous journal. In my current journal, I’ve written, I can trust in my knowing and my inner wisdom. I do not need to seek every answer outside myself.

Writing into a new season

My practice has also evolved. I no longer worry about keeping my pen moving. I write more slowly and thoughtfully, and I make time every day for gratitude and for that wise, loving voice that is always there if I listen for it. But I still write nearly every day, trusting that this practice is one of the great gifts in my life.

I’m heading into a new season now, one that will be both busy and marked by a significant transition, as my middle son embarks on a months-long overseas adventure. I know that I will have moments (maybe days) of sadness and fear and uncertainty. But I also know that I will find solace in my journal. And so, while the weather holds, I’ll find my way out to the patio, journal and coffee in hand. I’ll notice the air as it cools, listen for the first of the autumn birds, and watch for the other small markers of fall. I’ll write into the fall, through the descent into winter. I’ll write about my dark moments and the light, trusting by now that I can write my way through practically anything.

Key book companions along the way

The Light of the World: A Memoir – Elizabeth Alexander

The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times – Pema Chodron

The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems – Lorna Crozier

Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert

Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir – Natalie Goldberg

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within – Natalie Goldberg

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage – Ann Patchett

Journal of a Solitude – May Sarton

Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life – Dani Shapiro

About Sally Morgan

trusting the journey
 

Sally is a writer, teacher and mama. She’s on a journey to live a less driven and over-committed life, and to invite more contentment, grace and beauty into her everyday. She’s currently preoccupied with voice, purpose and slowing down.

In her forties, Sally spent a couple of years speed-dating her way through half the men in Victoria, BC. Her memoir, An Alphabet of Men: Dating My Way from Adam to Zak recounts that time in her life. Occasionally she posts to her blog, at www.trustingthejourney.ca. You can connect with Sally on Instagram

Photographs by Sally Morgan, used with permission and thanks.


Read more Wholehearted Stories

If you enjoyed this wholehearted story, please share it with others to inspire their journey. You might enjoy these stories too:

Lusciously Nurtured – a wholehearted interview with Dawne Gowrie Zetterstrom

Learning to live on the slow path and love the little things that light me up

Year of magic, year of sadness – a wholehearted story

From halfhearted to wholehearted living – my journey

The courageous magic of a life unlived – a wholehearted story

Dancing all the way – or listening to our little voice as a guide for wholehearted living

Tackling trauma and “not enough” with empathy and vision – a wholehearted story

When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted living

Maps to Self: my wholehearted story

The Journey to Write Here – my wholehearted story

Ancestral Patterns, Tarot Numerology and breaking through – my wholehearted story

Message from the middle – my wholehearted story

The journey of a lifetime – a wholehearted story

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story

Breakdown to breakthrough – my wholehearted life

Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story

Becoming who I really am – a wholehearted story

Finding my home – a wholehearted story

My wild soul is calling – a wholehearted story

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

Keep in touch 

Quiet Writing is on Facebook  Instagram and Twitter so keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

creativity inspiration & influence

Writing retreat in Hoi An review + photo essay – seeing with fresh eyes

October 31, 2018

You are permitting a return to yourself, and and in that return you will begin to see yourself and your life with fresh eyes. For that return is a foretaste of the inner place of retreat which in truth is never far away – after all, it is none other than who you are.

Roger Housden, Retreat: Time Apart for Silence and Solitude

Recently, I went on a writing retreat in Hoi An, Vietnam led by my friend Kerstin Pilz. Here is a review and photo essay of my experience and learning.

writing retreat

One thing I decided I would do this year is take myself away on a writing retreat. After a tough past year, a time of nourishing my creative self via a writing retreat sounded delicious. Shortly afterwards, my friend Kerstin Pilz of Write Your Journey (who has written her wholehearted story here on Quiet Writing!) announced a writing retreat in her home base of Hoi An, Vietnam in September this year.

I’ve always wanted to go to Vietnam and Hoi An in particular. Kerstin’s retreat included a focus on yoga as well as writing which was very inviting. In all it featured: writing, yoga, exploring Hoi An, beautiful boutique accommodation, sound bowl meditation and generally activating the jaded senses in a fresh environment. And all at a very reasonable price for so much valued input. That was all a big tick for me in every way for this writing retreat. So before long, I signed up for the retreat and eagerly awaited September.

Eventually I headed off on 7 September to Hoi An for a blissful week. Here is my story of my yoga and writing retreat week. In summary, if you are thinking of a writing retreat, I wholeheartedly recommend it, and especially Kerstin’s retreats, for seeing with fresh eyes. Absolutely do it – you will love the self-care, stimulation, reflection and perspective it provides. For further detail read on! Photographs are by Nigel Rowles, Kerstin Pilz and me, and others – all credits are noted with thanks at the bottom of this post.

writing retreat

Writing retreat

I’ve written for years, been to many writing workshops, created and been part of writing groups. But I’d never been on a writing retreat. The thought of going away for a week to focus on writing was such an exciting on! I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was open to whatever came. From my shift to a new life as a life coach, I knew approaching the retreat with a beginner’s mind was essential. So that’s what I went with. I took along the finished 84K first draft of my Wholehearted book, as much as a talisman as anything. Most of all, I knew I had a week to focus on writing and that was enough for me.

The writing experience on the retreat prompted us to hone in on our unique voice. With three of us at the retreat, we enjoyed close attention and a strong sense of connection. Writing sessions focused on a theme such as beginner’s mind (appropriate!), writing for the senses, storytelling, memoir and crafting a personal creative manifesto. We worked with various types of prompts such as physical objects and photo prompts.

It was so valuable for me to work with themes, prompts and exercises to dust off and access my voice. I have written in different ways as I’ve started a new business, drafted a non-fiction book and blogged on various platforms. But most of this writing started with my own motivations. It was valuable for someone else to provide the context, perspective, prompts and ideas to help access my voice and deeper stories.

Writing with others

Writing with a group, all of us different in our writing interests and motivations, was so powerful. I usually write alone so stepping outside of my comfort zone to write with others was another way of getting back to my voice with support and encouragement. Kerstin is a highly experienced writer, writing teacher and blogger as well as a university lecturer by background. She was adept at crafting a gentle writing curriculum experience that opened us up to our voice and skill. Moreover, Kerstin wrote alongside us and shared her words as well which I so valued.

We laughed and cried at different times and always marvelled at what could come forth in ten short minutes. It was a long time (years!) since I’ve read my own words out aloud. This in itself was so powerful. You forget the power of hearing your own voice. With the influence of the environment of Hoi An with all its colour and freshness weaving into our days alongside our writing, we refreshed our purpose, craft and voice from multiple perspectives.

writing retreatwriting retreatwriting retreat writing retreat

Yoga, sound bowl meditation and other treats

Having yoga and other healing practices alongside writing for the retreat was brilliant, each piece illuminating the other dimensions. Kerstin is an experienced yoga teacher, and partner, Nigel Rowles, is a professional musician and sound bowl master. All these skills combined to craft a writing retreat with practice and mindfulness as a central component. The unifying theme was practice – writing practice, yoga practice and other practices to help us still the mind and cultivate positive habits.

Our yoga studio was a purpose-built platform over the water in a secluded setting. Local yoga teacher, Victoria Nhan, led practices including early morning yoga sessions in a quiet and flexible way. Skilled in her teaching to meet the various needs of the group, Victoria reminded us to smile as we practised and to see our thoughts coming and going “like clouds in the sky”, reflecting the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. We also enjoyed a morning session of Qi Gong with Victoria at An Bang Beach.

Kerstin also led yoga sessions and provided meditation leadership. Nigel provided sound bowl music as a soundtrack and key element of our meditation practice. Sound bowl music was something I had never experienced first-hand and I loved it. The sound hangs in the air and goes through your body as it resonates. An individual hour-long sound bowl meditation with Nigel was included and involved the placing of sound bowls around us and on our body. It was the deepest of relaxation experiences. That night I slept like I hadn’t slept for a long time. A reiki session with Victoria was an extra option I took up. This was a deeply healing practice at the end of the retreat which helped to integrate the week.

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat writing retreat

Beautiful surrounds to calm, inspire and delight

Hoi An was all I had imagined and more and we were blessed to be staying in the most charming quiet  location. Our hosts at An Villa, our home for the week, went out of their way to make us feel at home and relaxed. Every need was met including excellent fresh food (most meals were included in the retreat package), stunning comfortable rooms, a beautiful pool, an open-air yoga studio and the best attention by all the staff. We felt like part of the An Villa family.

Phuong from An Villa in particular supported us, acting as tour guide when we visited the Ancient Town of Hoi An, travelling by boat first and then walking at night through the busy lantern-filled streets. She led us for a tour of the local markets where we purchased food for a cooking class led by An Villa staff. Walking through rice paddies to arrive at the market, the colours, sights and smells of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish met us and surrounded us as we wandered through. We selected our produce and headed back to learn about Vietnamese cuisine by preparing our own lunch. With our senses truly activated, we channelled these experiences into our writing.

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

A well-balanced and integrated itinerary and journey

Kerstin arranged a well-balanced itinerary and journey through the week. The yoga and writing complemented each other perfectly as we attended to both practices. We spent our time between the quiet solitude of An Villa and trips out and around. This included visits to the World Heritage listed ancient town of Hoi An, to a live performance of cultural theatre and music, to specially selected restaurants and to An Bang Beach for sunrise.

It felt so special to be treated to the delights of Hoi An by locals, with Kerstin, Nigel and Phuong accompanying us and showing us around. This meant we could truly relax and soak in the atmosphere, feeling safe and supported. You could just be in the moment exploring and absorbing, like everything was a part of the practice of craft and retreat.

Whether it was Qi Gong on An Bang Beach, a drink at the Market Bar at sunset, shopping in the lantern-lit ancient town, dinner at Chips and Fish, indulging in healing practices or writing by the pool or beside the beach, everything was so refreshing and integrated. Each day brought new pleasures to reflect on and enjoy: the taste of fresh produce carefully chosen and blended together; brilliant colours symbolised by lanterns everywhere; incense wafting in the streets to celebrate the New Moon; the crashing of waves rising to meet the sun; and Vietnamese performers flexing in powerful routines against a backdrop of resounding drums giving us a fresh take on tradition.

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

My learnings

My learning from this week are many and enduring including:

  • Writing exercises are useful tools to free up your writing, get in touch with your voice, create new content and move in new directions.
  • It’s revitalising to read your writing aloud and hear it in the company of others compassionately witnessing your work.
  • Indulge the senses and engage in new experiences to reinvigorate yourself and your writing. Hoi An is the perfect place for this.
  • The art of practice, whether it’s writing, yoga or anything else, is important to weave into our days. Each practice complements the others.
  • Fresh food is so much better than what we often find in supermarkets. Shopping in the local market and the meals at An Villa were a reminder to get back to basics. Since returning, I’ve sought out markets with fresher produce that tastes better and lasts longer.
  • Retreats can be intense. It was an emotional time but that intensity was important for moving through and on with self-care, craft and practice. Significant blocks were worked through, some I’m sure I am not even aware of still!
  • Occasionally I wanted for more introvert time for integrating everything, but I learnt there was enough of this time. The value of the retreat was in the multiplicity of experiences and interactions. There was opportunity for integrating on the way through and on the return home. Learning to manage my introvert in all of this was a valuable experience.

“Seeing with fresh eyes” sums up the feeling of the week. Whether it was looking at my writing practice, working out how to weave yoga into my days, eating better food, connecting with writing community, dealing with my introversion or enjoying new sights and sounds, it was all about that return to self and seeing afresh.

Special mentions

With all of this, it’s hard to single out the highlights. But if I think about where the experience and practice left a lasting impact, here’s a list of special mentions:

  • My fellow retreat participants – Heidi and Flora – were such a joy to be with. Spanning different generations, experiences, countries and cultures, we bonded deeply and laughed and cried together. Sharing my writing and story with these two special women and with Kerstin was a profound experience. I felt held and witnessed, just as I held space and witnessed their work. For this, I am very grateful.
  • Victoria Nhan is a skilled and healing yoga and Qi Gong teacher and Reiki practitioner. I connected deeply with her teaching and the Reiki session we enjoyed together integrated healing energy which I take forward.
  • All the staff at An Villa and especially Phuong and Le for all their attentions, making us feel so at home and welcome. The food was simply outstanding and another aspect of the “fresh” experience. I can’t wait to go back to An Villa for another stay. Fabulous choice, Kerstin!
  • Nigel Rowles for his work with the sound bowl music and meditations – such a special healing treat; for his photography that captured the highlights and moments and was generously shared with us; and for hosting us with Kerstin in so many ways over the week.

And finally to Kerstin, creator, architect, event manager, organiser, teacher, writer, tour guide, facilitator, photographer and friend. So many hats worn with such aplomb, generosity and deep commitment to us all. Thanks for sharing the joys of your hometown, your healing writing craft and yoga and meditation practices with us all. I am truly grateful for everything you created and shared with us.

Seeing with fresh eyes

On Kerstin’s website, she says:

I’m here to make you become best buddies with your inner writer, teach it to speak in your authentic voice and send you on a journey of discovery together.

And that was this writing retreat week was like, an intense and transformative journey of voice and discovery. If you have the opportunity to share in a writing retreat with Kerstin, do take it up. It’s a life-changing experience in so many dimensions, one that I am still unravelling and learning. It will certainly help you see life and yourself with fresh eyes. And in the meantime, visit Write Your Journey and connect with Kerstin and all her rich offerings and inspiration.

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

writing retreat

Photographic credits

We were blessed with excellent photographers for this retreat in Nigel and Kerstin helping us to capture the moments. I blend these images with my own in this photo-essay. The individual photographs are credited as follows, with photographs from others used with permission and thanks:

  1. Feature image – hand writing + The Writing Life – Nigel Rowles
  2. Hands writing – Nigel Rowles
  3. Flowers on the yoga deck – Terri Connellan
  4. Writing at An Villa – Nigel Rowles
  5. Heliconia by my villa entry – Terri Connellan
  6. Lanterns in Hoi An ancient town – Terri Connellan
  7. Our yoga pavilion studio over the water – Nigel Rowles
  8. Yoga practice – Nigel Rowles
  9. An Bang Beach sunrise – Terri Connellan
  10. Qi Gong on An Bang Beach – Nigel Rowles
  11. My villa home for the week at An Villa – Terri Connellan
  12. The garden and pool view at An Villa – Terri Connellan
  13. Cruising on the river into ancient town – Nigel Rowles
  14. Shopping at the local markets – Terri Connellan
  15. Ingredients, cooking class at An Villa – Terri Connellan
  16. Braised eggplant in claypot in preparation – Kerstin Pilz
  17. Rice fields on the way to the markets – Terri Connellan
  18. Local scene from a writing session at Anantara Hoi An resort – Terri Connellan
  19. Afternoon tea and writing session at Anantara Hoi An resort – Anantara staff
  20. Writing retreat buddies – Kerstin Pilz
  21. Nigel Rowles – Kerstin Pilz
  22. Kerstin and I at An Villa – Le, staff member An Villa
  23. Retreat participants in yoga pose with Victoria Nhan – Nigel Rowles
  24. Kerstin Pilz – Nigel Rowles

Keep in touch

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If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

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9 writing books to inspire your creativity and craft

September 30, 2018

If you want to be writer, you must do two things above all: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I am aware of, no shortcut.

On Writing, Stephen King

writing books

9 writing books to inspire your creativity

Here are nine writing books to inspire your craft and creative spirit with a taste of what each focuses on.

1. Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life – Dani Shapiro

I love a sub-title and include them all for this list! This one for Still Writing sums up beautifully what this book is all about. It provides vignettes on the craft of writing and living a creative life, day in, day out. The best books on writing take you inside what it’s like to live a writing life, as well as giving you advice and tips for the journey. Still Life takes us through aspects of the writing process as a lived experience structured around Beginnings, Middles and Ends. It’s gentle and encouraging, full of gems to inspire your journey.

Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us your humanity. It’s your job. (p32)

2. The Situation and the Story: the Art of Personal Narrative – Vivian Gornick

It took me a long time to work out what genre I wanted to write in. This book helped me work out that it was personal narrative. ‘The Situation and the Story’  is a deep-dive on the art and technique of personal narrative. Growing out of 15 years of teaching in MFA programs, it covers examples of the craft of personal narrative such as Loren Eiseley’s magnificent, ‘All the Strange Hours: the Excavation of a Life’ and Beryl Markham’s ‘West with the Night’. If like me, you aspire to write personal narrative or memoir, this is a fabulous handbook for the craft.

The presence in a memoir or an essay of the truth speaker–the narrator that a writer pulls out of his or her own agitated and boring self to organize a piece of experience–it was about this alone that I felt I had something to say; and it was to those works in which such a narrator comes through strong and clear that I was invariably drawn. (p25)

3. One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer’s Art and Craft – Susan M Tiberghien

This books is structured around a one year journey through and to a writing life. There are 12 genre-based lessons to deepen your writing craft. They are focused around areas like: journal writing, personal essays, opinion and travel essays, short stories, dialogue and poetic prose. These 12 workshops drawn from over 15 years of teaching combine inspiration and teaching and focus on creative practice as a habit. The idea is that as you work through the 12 lessons, one a month over a year, you shape the habit of your creative practice.

A person who writes has the habit of writing. The word habit refers to a routine, but also to a stole, to a costume befitting a calling. In the same way that a monk puts on a traditional habit, so the writer puts on a traditional habit. As writers we find where we are comfortable and with a stole over our shoulders, we write. (p ix)

4. If You Want to Write: Releasing your Creative Spirit – Brenda Ueland

This is a 1938 classic on releasing the natural writing spirit that is within all of us. It takes a very egalitarian and encouraging stance. Chapter 1 is entitled ‘Everybody Is Talented, Original and Has Something Important To Say and the book continues this theme and spirit. This is such a wise  book on writing and creativity, often cited in people’s lists of favourite creativity books. It is heart-filled and conversational in style, inspiring confidence and the ability to write with every page.

I want to assure you, with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time,–no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. (p15)

5. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within – Natalie Goldberg

Another writing classic, published in 1996, Writing Down the Bones is made up of short zen-style reads that focus on freeing us up to write. She focuses on simplifying and streamlining the process rather than adding rules. It’s about voice and story stripped back to their essence as a starting point  for creativity. And it’s all very common sense and practical, instilling confidence. If like me, you’ve acquired years of other people’s voices and corporate styles, this book is a palate cleanser and reminder to get back to your own writing voice, style and message.

Writing practice embraces your whole life and doesn’t demand any logical form: no Chapter 19 following the action of Chapter 18….It is undirected and has to do with all of you right in your present moment. Think of writing practice as loving arms you come to illogically and incoherently. (p13)

6. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – Stephen King

Another writing book that often appears as a favourite on the art and life of writing, this classic by veteran author Stephen King is part memoir and part writing class. Very down to earth, it’s honed from years of sitting down to write and creating book after book. King takes the fluff out of writing practice and encourages us to as well. His memorable and direct advice on adverbs has stayed with me: “The adverb is not your friend.”

If you want to be writer, you must do two things above all: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I am aware of, no shortcut. (p145)

7. Your Life as Story: Discovering the “New Autobiography” and Writing Memoir as Literature – Tristine Rainer

Tristine Rainer’s The New Diary was a seminal book inspiring my creativity and is featured in 36 BooksYour Life as Story continues the theme of life story as writing practice and creative source. Tristine Rainer’s specialty is autobiography and in this book she focuses on the evolution of autobiography as literature. The techniques for its practice are outlined including: genres of the self, truth, finding your voice and elements of story structure in autobiography. It’s a valuable read on the craft of memoir and autobiography for aspiring and practicing writers in this field.

If you complete even one short autobiographic story or essay, you will know the delight of creative alchemy, of making a gem out of life’s dross. (p16)

8. Writing the Natural Way: Using Right-Brain Techniques to Release your Expressive Powers – Gabriele Lusser Rico 

You might know of Betty Edwards’ book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This is the writing equivalent of that book and focuses on using right-brain techniques to release creativity in writing. Published in 1983 and structured in a course-based way, the strategies are a useful addition to your creative tool-kit. Practices include: clustering, recurrent, re-vision, image and metaphor, creative tension and language rhythm. With insights on how the brain works throughout, it’s a great book for inspiring confidence in new-found ways especially if your left-brain critic is a very loud and powerful force.

Just as two heads are better than one for solving problems, so two brains are better than one when it comes to writing naturally.

9. The Successful Author Mindset: A Handbook for Surviving the Writer’s Journey – Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn’s The Successful Author Mindset focuses on mindset and the long-haul creative journey of being a writer. Writing is a lonely journey with self-doubt and your inner critic ever-present in shifting ways. This books covers the landscape of mindset issues writers encounter. It offers suggestions for recognising and tackling these issues, based on Joanna’s years of experience. Including excerpts from Joanna’s diary over her years of writing and self-publishing, it focuses on the emotional journey of being a writer. It’s about creativity for the longer term and riding the emotions over time.

Embrace self-doubt as part of the creative process. Be encouraged by the face that virtually all other creatives, including your writing heroes, feel it too with every book they write.

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You might also enjoy:

How to read for more creativity, pleasure and productivity

How to know and honour your special creative influences

Honour you lineage by Sage Cohen – from ‘Fierce on the Page

Creative practices in my toolkit to make the most of this year’s energies

Words to inspire from Steven Pressfield’s The Artist’s Journey

Work in progress – being one and creating one

wholehearted stories writing

The journey to write here—my wholehearted story

August 30, 2018

This guest post from Penelope Love explores how following our deepest calling as writers can shape the journey of our wholehearted stories.

journey to write here

Write at home, Asheville, 2018

This is the twelfth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors! 

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, with each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I am honoured to have my friend Penelope Love as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Penelope explores writing as a deep calling shaping her journey over time. She describes how her writing life has intersected with love and spirituality as key themes in her life. My sincere thanks to Penelope for sharing her personal story and photographs as well as the books and vital practices that have influenced her journey. With her new book – a memoir, ‘Wake Up in Love: From Sex and Romance to the Ultimate Understanding’ – imminent, read Penelope’s reflections on knowing your calling, writing and love to guide your story!

Beginning my journey to write here

To write or not to write was never the question.

My love for writing was born of sheer enchantment with the dance of my elfin fingers and a No. 2 pencil pressed against the bumpy margins of a newspaper left strewn across the kitchen table. Whilst my mother washed dishes, I perfected my letters… slowly, slowly carving out my name. I tingled as the life force pierced my body and brain. Waving a pink-tipped golden wand, I witnessed the alphabet come to life before me… oh, t’was magical!

A rainbow of writing accolades soon spanned my horizon. As early as my elementary years, the parents and relatives branded me “the writer in the family,” their New York accents spinning legends of a little girl who would traject this gift across the world.

As I approached high school graduation, my father often spoke of his friend’s daughter who made a living as a writer. In fact, she earned six figures and was even flown around the globe with her happy pen in hand. Imagine that! I did indeed—first-class flights to Rome, Paris, Strasbourg, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Perth, and Calgary, not to mention being lavished with more money than one could ever need, just because a girl could write?!

Write about what? 

journey to write here

Write in the clouds, 2017

Write about what? I didn’t know, but the question of her subject matter never crossed my thirsty teenage mind. I just wanted her life in the azure sky, miles above the clouds and close to the shimmering sun. In no time, I’d be like her—rich, self-sufficient, and far away from people who expected miracles from me.

It was the mid-1990s when I entered the university with a typewriter in hand and later departed with a laptop bag draped over my shoulder. In four short years, the new-fangled digital tools of the trade had literally changed our world and most importantly for me, the way this English major now wrote. Possessing a “delete” key, I lost countless writings to self-doubt, and even more to lack of remembering to hit Control + S. The fluorescent palette of Windows 95 proved a more addictive drug for a perfectionist than any erasable pen. It was too easy to tweak e-scribblings that never seemed quite good enough. The brave new world was now here and I was not sure I wanted to be a writer anymore.

Despite my uncertainty, I could not shake my writer crush on Alice Walker—her novels, poetry, essays, activism and how she effortlessly transformed rage into beauty that inspired social change through her poignant words. With this level of mastery as my barometer, I pursued a master’s degree in English, though to expand my career opportunities I eventually phased over to the college of journalism. Focused first and foremost on getting “published,” writing seemed far from the mystical endeavor I’d fallen in love with as a child.

Then it happened. As I formulated my thesis, I discovered that I no longer enjoyed writing. Yet I sure was in love with the professors who taught it. To my chagrin, my finest writings never extended into the realms of passion I fantasized about. Writing? Huh. Why expose my soul before teachers who just left my heart bleeding overnight while they went home to their lives, of which I had none? Why torture myself when I was deft enough at this craft to instruct others on how to do it? Why write if I could swap my black pen for a red one and wear silky scarves and blouses, sexy skirts, stilettos, and tortoise-shell glasses? I mean, why write if I could be an editor!

Writer in hiding

journey to write here

Writer in reflection, 2018

By the late ‘90s, the U.S. economy had exploded during the .com craze—so much in fact that some corporations were even paying the lowly interns—yes, me! Here my lucky star landed me an editorial apprenticeship in the personal finance and lifestyle department of the prestigious Bankrate.com. I had recently married a business student and I was acquiring a taste for the freedom that came with earning my own paycheck. I was not flying high yet, but I’d circumnavigated my existence as a puppet dangled by parents who had kept me mostly in the dark about all things financial. As fate and good fortune would have it, my Bankrate internship enriched me with both income and invaluable knowledge.

Following graduation, my then-husband and I moved north to pursue our dreams of working in the Big Apple—Manhattan! I dressed the part and perhaps imagined that even the pigeons stared as I sauntered down Fifth Avenue as an editorial assistant. Within three weeks the Twin Towers came crashing down, along with my fantasies about commuting to the city and wielding my editorial prowess in New York. Since I was actually residing in safer haven of nearby Princeton, New Jersey, I stayed put and soared up the corporate ladder, so high that I didn’t even bother keeping a diary over the next five years. Too busy had I become for my own words when so many people were counting on me to perfect theirs.

Falling back in love with writing

When life led me back to Florida in 2003, it was the stress of destructive family dynamics and an impending divorce that led me to an Al-Anon meeting, where the facilitator urged me to crack open my journal again. She was right—I needed to know if I could still hear my own voice beneath the deafening volume of all the mental noise I’d let in over the years. The higher up the corporate ladder I scaled, the more it felt tilted 180 degrees away from the happiness, inner peace and deep healing I desired more than anything in the world.

journey to write here

Dear Emptiness, 2003

This may sound fantastical but when I re-opened my diary, her empty lines smiled as if happy to see me, their old friend. She embraced my every tear, question, and hopeful new conception of reality bubbling up from my long-silenced heart. I confess, my journal entries reflected the soul of a woman consumed by primal desires for true love and red hot sex. Yet as I returned to the joys of pressing my pen to paper, I experienced an inkling of falling back in love with writing.

The proper care and feeding of writers

Loving a man and loving writing were ultimately not two separate things, although I’d fallen into a discordant thought-pattern of either-or:

Either I could pursue my writing career or I could care for a man, but not both.

Such a black-and-white attitude sounds imprudently restrictive now, but this worldview was branded into the layers of my soul since birth. My mother lived as if it were her sole responsibility to care for my father and for us children. The notion that I could gallivant about the globe as a writer—although it had been dangled before me like candy—conflicted with other familial attitudes I was forced to swallow regarding about “the proper care and feeding of husbands.” Could I ever balance true love, a nourishing sex life, and a successful writing career? This clash of seemingly incompatible desires and my utter lack of control to manifest them catapulted me onto the spiritual path with full surrender.

It was 2004 and the spiritual teacher to whom I was led was a jnani in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi. Nick Gancitano disseminated Self-Inquiry as the spiritual director of an ashram in Florida, where I attended Satsang for the first time. My earnest desire for inner peace was met with a revelation of karmic destiny, as Nick became my lover and we were married within two weeks of our first meeting. Our sex life unfolded as an intuitive exploration of the ancient ways of Tantra. Here I found that with an authentic state of surrender, true love was not only possible—it was inevitable, transforming sex into a meditation that trumped my most exquisite erotic fantasies.

To top it all off, during the course of this adventure, I discovered something truly worth writing about. Scribble down insights I did, vowing that one day, once the tender fragments in my journals had been laced into a manuscript reflecting my heart’s knowing, I would publish it. And I would come out as a writer.

journey to write here

Write from the Heart, India 2004

Morning Pages and the journey to write

As quickly as I moved into the ashram, my spiritual practice deepened and creativity flowed now with greater frequency. I’d hopped off the corporate ladder and went freelance, consciously reducing my workload toward a deep dive into the inner life. Yet despite my newfound time freedom, I only wrote in spurts. As much as I respected my daytime profession, my heart knew that an editor is actually just a writer in denial. In 2007, I expressed my frustration to a Satsang friend, a prolific fashion designer whose overstuffed sketch book I admired. She recommended Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, wherein I discovered the Morning Pages that would leave ink stains on my hands and a mark on my life.

Between 2007 and 2010, I folded my freelance business when the ashram relocated to Costa Rica. There amidst the cloud forest I exercised the Morning Pages with the intention of writing my book. I invited Nick to write these Morning Pages with me, and within six weeks a full-fledged, 280-page manuscript busted the seams of his notebook. And once again, I found an excuse to avoid writing as I turned creative attention toward the development and publishing of the book that had come through him and not me.

journey to write here

Write into nature, our Morning Pages view in Costa Rica, 2008-10

Patterns emerging in the journey to write here

This provided me an opportunity to observe a pattern as destructive as avoidance—blame: It was now my husband’s fault that I’m not a writer. When we returned to the States in 2010, it seemed that years of energy were required to re-establish myself as a freelance editor and eventually form my own successful publishing company. In the intermittent creases of successive projects, I finally returned to the Morning Pages in 2013 and the past patterns of avoidance and blame resurfaced only to unwind before my very eyes.

journey to write

Soul mates in the sun, Hillsboro Beach, 2011

Initially, past learned behavior of putting what I perceived as my husband’s needs before my own re-emerged fiercely. I hadn’t chosen the worldly path of self-sufficiency; I’d chosen love, the inward path of Self-Inquiry, and reliance on God to care for all my needs. For weeks, months and years at a time, I foolishly convinced myself that the Morning Pages were incompatible with the teachings of Self-Inquiry—for if the world is an illusion, then why write? And I couldn’t have the mornings free anyway, because if I didn’t snuggle and meditate with Nick first thing, would I be sinfully putting my personal desires before love?

But that was all in my head. Nick became the biggest advocate of my relationship with the Morning Pages and with time and flexibility, I discovered it was possible to experience the holy trinity of writing, snuggling and meditation in my morning routine. In a way, I owe my forthcoming memoir to Love in the shape of Morning Pages. Here is an excerpt from them as testimony to the brilliance of this tool that intimately reacquainted my soul with its calling—the mysticism and magic of writing.

journey to write here

Love looks me in the ‘I’, 2018

Write here in my Morning Pages

It’s happening again. I hear my husband’s voice in the other room and my senses latch on to his every word and I blame him that I can’t find a quiet space to write—which is ridiculous because I might as well blame the iPod speaker on the bookshelf. Yet it does not have the same magnetic pull as Nick in his sentience, his unpredictability, his wisdom, his love. Aha! Look. Curiosity about what he is up to has once again (almost) drawn me away from this sacred whitespace where all complaints dissolve and contradictions resolve before my eyes.

Now I’m perfectly capable of closing the door and inserting the earplugs in an effort to be “more” present, but isn’t the point of Morning Pages shedding that thick skin called “effort” by writing through any and all distractions? Why am I here in the first place? Writing is just the excuse. I am here to remember what matters, to let go of what does not, and to write like no one else is reading it. In Reality, I am not even here to write. I am here to Be, to be naked of all sense of other… and paradoxically, that makes me a better writer and a more gracious lover.

journey to write here

The writing is flowing now (The Savegre River in our backyard, 2008-10)

When Steven Pressfield, talking with Oprah on SuperSoul Sunday, affirmed that everyone knows their “calling,” even if only carried as a secret in their heart, I could not deny my intuitive first response: writing!

What exactly pulled my attention so far from it all these years? I actually don’t like or dislike the act of writing. It is after all—just like when I practiced my letters at the kitchen table—just a happening. What I don’t enjoy is “the resistance,” the feeling that arises from expecting myself to express profundity. The one with these great expectations is the same imposter saying “I don’t enjoy it”! Yet it can’t stop the ink flow onto paper, the fingers dancing on a keyboard, and the characters appearing on the screen, revealing the contours of God.

It is wonderfully fulfilling to write the Morning Pages. Thank heavens for them. They are therapy. Like the perfect friend, they listen without criticism. If a judgment arises, they gently remind me it is my own. And now that it no longer hides, it cannot rule my life from underground. It can be seen for what it is: just another thought. Just another stone on the trail. One I can now pick up and skip across the still ocean, or prance across to reach the other side of the raging river. Either way, it no longer blocks the path and the beauty of my mind.

I am a writer — yes, I am!

My hand my Heart doth steer

universes beyond these words

my journey to write here.

Key books along my journey to write here

Be Still and Know I AM God by Anonymous

The Wisdom of Balsekar by Ramesh Balsekar

The Impersonal Life by Joseph Benner

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi (Foreword by C.J. Jung)

The Book of Secrets by OSHO

OSHO Zen Tarot: The Transcended Game of Zen

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Hsin-Hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith-Mind by Seng-t’san

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

The Supreme Yoga: Yoga Vasishta by Swami Venkatesananda

Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism by Alice Walker

My Life as My Self: An Intimate Conversation with Alice Walker (by Sounds True)

and…

“Four Questions to Help You Find Your Calling,” Steven Pressfield’s interview with Oprah Winfrey on SuperSoul Sunday, September 29, 2013

About Penelope Love

journey to write here

 

Penelope Love, MA, is the author of the spiritual memoir Wake Up in Love and the founder of Citrine Publishing. She also co-facilitates conscious relationship workshops and hosts meditation programs in the United States and internationally. An advocate for true love, she enjoys connecting with readers from around the world. Come say hello at www.PenelopeLove.com or connect via Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter.

 

Photographs by Penelope Love and Arlington Smith used with permission and thanks.

Read more Wholehearted Stories

If you enjoyed this wholehearted story, please share it with others to inspire their journey. You might enjoy these stories too:

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Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story

Breakdown to breakthrough – my wholehearted life

Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story

Becoming who I really am – a wholehearted story

Finding my home – a wholehearted story

My wild soul is calling – a wholehearted story

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

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