Tuesday, December 4, 2007 at 2:02am
I - I mean 'we' - just wrote my book
Column: Writing Down Your Soul
Writing about Writing, Part 1
I just wrote my book.
That is a straightforward English sentence with a subject, verb and object. And it is completely accurate. That is, over the past six months, I wrote 78,701 words on the topic "Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," on 330 double-spaced pages while sitting at my computer in my writing office in my home. With the exception of some time to honor my mother's death in July, a couple weeks to get my son ready for and settled into college in August, and several days here and there to write some consulting reports, I worked on "Writing Down Your Soul" six to nine hours a day, seven days a week. The result? On Nov. 13 I wrote the last word. On Nov. 14 I mailed the manuscript. And on Nov. 15, I sent an email to my friends and family announcing, "I just wrote my book."
But there's a problem with that sentence. Even though it's true, each and every word is a lie. If you've ever written a book or a dissertation or anything else that totally consumed you, you understand what I mean. But for most of us, writing is a deep, dark mystery. We love the results, of course. We love to dive into a gripping whodunit or be swept away by a moving novel. We love to have our minds poked by provocative non-fiction and probed by inspiring self-help books. But the truth is, we don't have a clue how a writer does it.
I didn't either. I thought I did, but I didn't. Mind you, I'd read all the great "how to write" books like "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg, and "Becoming a Writer" by Dorothea Brande — all of which I heartily recommend. I'd studied "How to Write a Book Proposal" by Michael Larsen as if my life depended on it. (In the end, I guess it did.) I invested in The Chicago Manual of Style and the Oxford English Dictionary. (Maybe I'm a little weird, but it makes me happy to look up words in the weighty OED.) I laughed my way through the British treatise on grammar "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. I bought the amazing Visual Thesaurus online word map and used it every day. And I regularly revisited the writer's essential reference, The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. All told, two shelves in my office bookcase are devoted to books on writing. Plus, I write a thousand words, give or take a little, every week for ReligionAndSpirituality.com and I've written seven countries' worth of heart-healing exercises for "Spiritual Geography," so I thought I knew something about writing.
I was wrong.
The truth is, I did not write anything. In the sense of "I" being a singular pronoun, designating this person called Janet Conner, and indicating by its position and power in the sentence "I just wrote my book" that the only person doing anything was me. Talk about a fib! Of course, when the book comes out in November 2008, the author's name will be Janet Conner and only Janet Conner. But I know the truth. I know that I didn't do it alone.
Yes, I had lots of human help. There were friends who recommended experts, and those experts gave generously of their time and wisdom. There were published authors who graciously permitted me to quote them in "Writing Down Your Soul." There were dozens of soul writers who shared their experiences and insights. But I'm talking about something else, something greater than and different from human help. Each time a new expert appeared on the horizon at precisely the moment I needed input in their area of expertise, I knew they came in direct response to my requests for help.
I didn't write this book. We wrote this book. There is no doubt in my mind that I had extraordinary help. But who is this we? That is the great question. And, even though I've had the experience of writing a book in partnership with something greater than myself, and even though I wrote a book about how to activate and listen to the extraordinary Voice within and I practiced every thing I teach, I still can't tell you exactly who we is.
Is it God? Yes, of course, but who or what is God? Please! Saints and theologians from every great spiritual tradition haven't been able to definitively answer that question; why should I even try? Is it my writing angels? Yes, I called on them every day. Is it the spirit of my mother and the guidance of my dead ex-husband? I sensed they were helping. Is it my soul's higher, more advanced, more knowing self, looking back and showing me the way? I think that might be so. Is it the energy that holds the universe together and courses through every atom, somehow coursing through me? I'm sure it is. But what exactly is that? I don't really know. But I do know what it feels like to touch it and work in sync with it.
I know that I experienced direction, guidance and input. I know that the faucet of ideas, words and contacts was wide open and flowing at all times. All I had to do was tap it — even as I slept. I know that writing often felt more like taking dictation than writing. Even though I worked harder than I've worked on anything in my entire life, it wasn't work; it was joy. I know the book had a life of its own. It threw out my carefully constructed, detailed outline and rewrote itself. Then it attracted all the information I needed. People I'd never heard of appeared on my to-do list. But it decided who would be interviewed and who would be suddenly unavailable. It decided how the book would begin and how it would end. The book wrote itself. I had only to surrender to the experience and move my fingers across the keys. The result will be this thing we call a "book," with pages bound within a pretty cover. But it isn't a book. It isn't a lifeless thing; it's a living, breathing connection — a conversation between me and the reader, me and the divine, the reader and the divine.
I know all this is true because it happened. But define it? Explain it? Describe it? I can't. In the end, I can't articulate who we is, or how we worked, or what exactly we produced together. And I'm perfectly OK with that. I hope you are too, because even though I can't fully explain what "it" is or how it works, I can tell you exactly how I accessed it and harnessed it for my book — uh, I mean our book — uh, I mean our conversation.
For the next several weeks, I will teach you everything I know about writing — but it won't resemble any writing advice you've ever heard. And someday you too will say to your friends, "I just wrote my book," and then you'll smile and say, "I mean, we just recorded our conversation."
— — —
Janet Conner, S.E. (Spiritual Explorer), is the creator of the "Spiritual Geography" map and book series. Her new book, "Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," will be published in November 2008 by Conari Press. The "Spiritual Geography" heart-healing workbooks are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Contact Janet at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}.© Copyright 2007 by Janet Conner.
I just wrote my book.
That is a straightforward English sentence with a subject, verb and object. And it is completely accurate. That is, over the past six months, I wrote 78,701 words on the topic "Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," on 330 double-spaced pages while sitting at my computer in my writing office in my home. With the exception of some time to honor my mother's death in July, a couple weeks to get my son ready for and settled into college in August, and several days here and there to write some consulting reports, I worked on "Writing Down Your Soul" six to nine hours a day, seven days a week. The result? On Nov. 13 I wrote the last word. On Nov. 14 I mailed the manuscript. And on Nov. 15, I sent an email to my friends and family announcing, "I just wrote my book."
But there's a problem with that sentence. Even though it's true, each and every word is a lie. If you've ever written a book or a dissertation or anything else that totally consumed you, you understand what I mean. But for most of us, writing is a deep, dark mystery. We love the results, of course. We love to dive into a gripping whodunit or be swept away by a moving novel. We love to have our minds poked by provocative non-fiction and probed by inspiring self-help books. But the truth is, we don't have a clue how a writer does it.
I didn't either. I thought I did, but I didn't. Mind you, I'd read all the great "how to write" books like "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg, and "Becoming a Writer" by Dorothea Brande — all of which I heartily recommend. I'd studied "How to Write a Book Proposal" by Michael Larsen as if my life depended on it. (In the end, I guess it did.) I invested in The Chicago Manual of Style and the Oxford English Dictionary. (Maybe I'm a little weird, but it makes me happy to look up words in the weighty OED.) I laughed my way through the British treatise on grammar "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. I bought the amazing Visual Thesaurus online word map and used it every day. And I regularly revisited the writer's essential reference, The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. All told, two shelves in my office bookcase are devoted to books on writing. Plus, I write a thousand words, give or take a little, every week for ReligionAndSpirituality.com and I've written seven countries' worth of heart-healing exercises for "Spiritual Geography," so I thought I knew something about writing.
I was wrong.
The truth is, I did not write anything. In the sense of "I" being a singular pronoun, designating this person called Janet Conner, and indicating by its position and power in the sentence "I just wrote my book" that the only person doing anything was me. Talk about a fib! Of course, when the book comes out in November 2008, the author's name will be Janet Conner and only Janet Conner. But I know the truth. I know that I didn't do it alone.
Yes, I had lots of human help. There were friends who recommended experts, and those experts gave generously of their time and wisdom. There were published authors who graciously permitted me to quote them in "Writing Down Your Soul." There were dozens of soul writers who shared their experiences and insights. But I'm talking about something else, something greater than and different from human help. Each time a new expert appeared on the horizon at precisely the moment I needed input in their area of expertise, I knew they came in direct response to my requests for help.
I didn't write this book. We wrote this book. There is no doubt in my mind that I had extraordinary help. But who is this we? That is the great question. And, even though I've had the experience of writing a book in partnership with something greater than myself, and even though I wrote a book about how to activate and listen to the extraordinary Voice within and I practiced every thing I teach, I still can't tell you exactly who we is.
Is it God? Yes, of course, but who or what is God? Please! Saints and theologians from every great spiritual tradition haven't been able to definitively answer that question; why should I even try? Is it my writing angels? Yes, I called on them every day. Is it the spirit of my mother and the guidance of my dead ex-husband? I sensed they were helping. Is it my soul's higher, more advanced, more knowing self, looking back and showing me the way? I think that might be so. Is it the energy that holds the universe together and courses through every atom, somehow coursing through me? I'm sure it is. But what exactly is that? I don't really know. But I do know what it feels like to touch it and work in sync with it.
I know that I experienced direction, guidance and input. I know that the faucet of ideas, words and contacts was wide open and flowing at all times. All I had to do was tap it — even as I slept. I know that writing often felt more like taking dictation than writing. Even though I worked harder than I've worked on anything in my entire life, it wasn't work; it was joy. I know the book had a life of its own. It threw out my carefully constructed, detailed outline and rewrote itself. Then it attracted all the information I needed. People I'd never heard of appeared on my to-do list. But it decided who would be interviewed and who would be suddenly unavailable. It decided how the book would begin and how it would end. The book wrote itself. I had only to surrender to the experience and move my fingers across the keys. The result will be this thing we call a "book," with pages bound within a pretty cover. But it isn't a book. It isn't a lifeless thing; it's a living, breathing connection — a conversation between me and the reader, me and the divine, the reader and the divine.
I know all this is true because it happened. But define it? Explain it? Describe it? I can't. In the end, I can't articulate who we is, or how we worked, or what exactly we produced together. And I'm perfectly OK with that. I hope you are too, because even though I can't fully explain what "it" is or how it works, I can tell you exactly how I accessed it and harnessed it for my book — uh, I mean our book — uh, I mean our conversation.
For the next several weeks, I will teach you everything I know about writing — but it won't resemble any writing advice you've ever heard. And someday you too will say to your friends, "I just wrote my book," and then you'll smile and say, "I mean, we just recorded our conversation."
— — —
Janet Conner, S.E. (Spiritual Explorer), is the creator of the "Spiritual Geography" map and book series. Her new book, "Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," will be published in November 2008 by Conari Press. The "Spiritual Geography" heart-healing workbooks are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Contact Janet at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}.© Copyright 2007 by Janet Conner.