Jean, Maryse and Vincent were more alike than they were different.
But in just briefly meeting them, you may not have noticed their similarities.
After all, Jean was a sales exec for a marketing company based out of Seattle when we first met. Maryse was a mother and homemaker, trained by profession as a translator, living in upstate New York. And Vince was a 20-something student and freelancer from the Philippines.
With about 30 years (and thousands of miles) between them, the shared subject that brought the likes of Jean, Maryse and Vincent together was writing.
Not too long ago, Jean, Maryse and Vincent were all members of my (now defunct) online writers’ group, The Literati Writers, where I worked with nearly 300 budding writers, freelancers, bloggers, part-time journalers and curious-creatives over five years.
Some of my writing clients were self-employed or aspiring towards writing as a career, but most were like Jean, Maryse and Vincent: each replete with daily duties, offline obligations, family responsibilities and personal aspirations that far-and-away exceeded those of writing.
They each had a curiosity with writing.
It was an interest, but not a change-your-whole-life-forever passion. Writing represented an intrigue: it was less about writing a book, or finding a book agent, or penning 60,000 words per month.
Jean, Maryse and Vincent, like most of my writing clients, were seeking the aid, support and experience of a personal practice in self-expression. They wanted something that could illuminate more of their own innate wisdom, highlight the subtle stories of self-limitation held them back from full self-knowledge, and allow them to live more aligned to their core values.
Which is actually the very reason why each of them had sought out me and my work as a teacher of writing:
I teach the art of writing in ways that are unfamiliar to many, especially if you’ve only ever been introduced to writing in an academic or a professional setting.
I invite each person with whom I work to experience a personal and experiential style of writing that is far less about external rewards (labels, titles, blog subscribers, book goals, “getting a point across,” character plotting or convincing readers of something), and more about the subtle inner inquiry, the boon to self-knowledge that awaits, and the simple system of self-support that is always within reach through the art of writing.
I teach writing to share a practice of self-knowledge that is intimate, artful, and definitely rewarding.
But why is writing, specifically, such a vessel for personal growth?
It just so happens that how we experience self-expression acts as a mirror to who we are, what we’re experiencing in the rest of our lives, and reveals the sneaking ways in which we feel held back, frustrated, lacking, or unwhole.
By doing as little as witnessing what stories emerge on the page — and gently and earnestly reflecting on our personal struggles, hang-ups or sticking points with this creative medium — my clients like Jean, Maryse and Vincent all began to make enormous strides towards more of what they desired in their lives, both on and off the page.
— Jean had had never written consistently before. She didn’t consider herself to be “a writer,” and wasn’t even sure why she felt called into this form of creative self-expression. I told Jean I would help her understand why. Today, now years later, she says that every time she comes back to her writing practice it is as if she is “coming home to a very true, very real part of myself.”
— Words were Maryse’s profession before she dedicated two decades to mothering her children full time. She didn’t know where to take her old passion once her kids had grown up. She tried to start a blog, build a readership, and follow other online advice to honor her personal calling to write. All it did was make her feel lacking and “less than.” So, she quit. When we met, I told Maryse that I’d help her reconnect to her love of words without any burden of pressure, let alone the expectation that writing means you “have to” publish a darn thing. Today, years later, Maryse now says that permission to not write was the biggest key to creative freedom. With what she learned on the page, Maryse can now safely say that her only goal with life off the page is to be and remain “at peace with the flow of life” in the everyday.
— Vincent’s first memory of writing was in grade-school when his teacher forced him to write every letter of the alphabet repeatedly. It was only an exercise in handwriting, he realized years later, but all the same it left Vince with an emotional wound that connected writing to judgment and criticism. Years later, Vince was in need of an outlet for healing and transformation during an important stage of identity shifting in his life. He suspected that writing could help, but was extremely reluctant to get help if it meant risking judgment, criticism, or grade-school pressure. I told Vince I could help him, and would show him his writing again — but without a trace of force or obligation. After a several-week span of consistent, unforced daily journaling (for the first time ever), Vince told me, “the experience was life-changing.”
All that I have learned in working with hundreds of writers from around the world, including Jean, Maryse and Vincent, I’ve now built into a writing course unlike anything I’ve ever heard of, let alone shared before: a program that exists at the intersection of creative self-expression and spiritual self-activation.
It’s called Unavoidable Writing: Turn What You’re Resisting Into Your Refuge.
It’s my proudest work to date, and it will be available to you for the first time beginning on December 21, 2017 as a private pilot program for my readers, clients and friends as I test, tweak and improve the course before debuting it to the public in 2018.
This is your first-best-chance to jump in and explore the writing philosophy that changed so much for Jean, Maryse and Vincent on the page, as well as off of it.
Register now »
What’s the Course About? Who Is It For?
Over the last half-decade, I’ve discovered a pretty precise framework for helping writers treat what was actually holding them back from doing the writing they desired: it all gets to the heart of this idea of “turning resistance into refuge.”
No single resource I’ve ever come across in my years of writing has scratched the surface of this kind of approach.
In fact, in my experience, most so-called “advice” on writing for writers is not only unhelpful, but outright harmful to writers and their writing:
- Most advice applies an attitude of industrialization to the art of writing, reducing the nuance and artful experience of writing to matters of skill, hard work, time, and effort
- Most advice leans on our society’s over-masculinization of everything, in turn shaming creatives for their struggles around writing and imposing a culture of self-brutalization around emotion, feeling, sense perception and inner trust
This widespread disregard for the inner source of a writer’s discomfort and struggle around writing inflicts a pain, confusion, and distrust of one’s self. Enter: starving artist syndrome, “woe is me,” and a litany of stereotypes and misconceptions around writers and creatives.
I’ve seen it hundreds of times.
I’m on a mission to undo the harm done to writers and artists around the world, and Unavoidable Writing is my flag in the ground.
This course means to show you how the very source of your avoidance is a gift of awareness that will lead you into a stronger, happier and healthier relationship to yourself: the key to awakening your soul-code, and advancing along your journey towards purpose, fulfillment, service, and love in your life.
This big potential begins simply in Unavoidable Writing by opening an exploration of the most common stumble-points around developing a writing practice at all.
You’ll learn practical writing tactics like:
- How and where to get started (and why starting sounds so simple, but proves so challenging)
- What to write about (when you’re not sure what to write about)
- Why the title of “being a writer” really doesn’t matter, and how to stop comparing yourself to others
In turn, you’ll discover how to:
- Embrace your budding writing practice as a self-support system that compliments, rather than imposes upon, your everyday life
- Harness feel, flow, trust and intuition to reveal the path your soul already knows you ought to take
- Put on your “writer hat” whenever you need it to feel proud, seen, and represented for part of the full range of the amazing, nuanced, whole, and divine being you are
Whether you’ve kept a journal for 20 years, only write out of necessity, or don’t even consider yourself to be a “writer” in title, Unavoidable Writing will usher through a conscientious narrative chock-full of lessons, insights and exercises that will give you everything that you need to…
- Build writing into the fabric of your everyday life and living spaces
- Remove pressures, doubts and anxiety from your writing desires
- Uncover and embrace the self-limiting beliefs and excuses you tell yourself as a pathway into what to write about
- Use your writing curiosity as a source for getting closer to the people around you, and to connect with new people on a more resonant level
- Overcome imposter syndrome and transcend old, outdated, painful memories of shaming or judgment that have left a mark of resistance against expressing yourself at all
You’ll discover my system for turning what you’re resisting, avoiding, or feeling uncomfortable about into your “first next step” of discovering your underlying “shadow” source of avoidance.
Through precise language, self-exploration, and some tried-and-true exercises and prompts, you’ll begin to transcend and heal that shadow source — turning that old thing of resistance into a new outlet of personal refuge.
If that wasn’t awesome enough, better yet, there are no start dates, deadlines, hard expectations or other anxiety-inducers in Unavoidable Writing.
This course is a self-guided experience aided by writing prompts, creative exercises, and occasional emails to keep you accountable to working through it.
You can expect an in-depth, nuanced and experiential program full of reflection, aha-moments and (of course!) page upon rewarding page of writing.
Effortlessly.
Register Now
I’ve learned that it’s not unique to struggle with writing.
What’s unique is finding a supportive solution to learn from your discomfort or sticking point with writing to help you write, instead of burying the feeling, denying the emotion, or being made to feel like a broken fool about it.
Every one of my 300 writing clients in the past has expressed a struggle around their writing. But by turning the point of resistance into their writing curriculum, each of my clients has found the perfect, personal entry-point for further learning and growing both as writers, and as human beings, through their writing practice.
I want to introduce you to the philosophy, methodology, and transformational approach that I’ve been teaching to such great effect. Learn how to embrace the precise struggle around your self-expression as your “first next step” in your writing journey. Watch what changes when you do!
You’ll have just a couple weeks to snatch up the Unavoidable Writing at a very special price of $179 (marked down from its eventual price in 2018 of $300), during this initial beta pilot program.
Your discounted investment includes exclusive bonuses and all future updates to the course, for life.
Buy it once, and it’s yours forever, even if you’re not planning to get into it until the New Year.
Register now »
Most writing advice does you wrong. It tells you to neglect how you’re feeling. To deny your inner voice. To treat this method of self-expression as a matter of raw skill that takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master.
Forget that. Forget all of that.
In Unavoidable Writing, I’ll show you how what you’re avoiding is the only pathway you require for a personalized journey of discovery, healing and soul-growth.
Don’t miss your chance to get in as a founding member on the ground floor. Our doors are open for a short time. :)
