Dreams Come True

Sheri Nicholls

Walt Disney has been credited with saying, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”  I have a dream that I have begun acting on—writing an historical fiction novel based on the real life events of my grandmother, Mary.

The seed was planted when a respected business colleague—after reading a press release I had prepared—said, “You should write a book; you are a good writer.”  Over the years others have made similar comments and the seed germinated.

There came a point when I knew my life would be transitioning and I asked myself, “What next, writing?”  But I did not have a journalism degree nor was my education loaded in literature or composition classes.  My business success was not realized through academic credentials however, but via my strong work ethic that lies deep in my gene pool and re-enforced by my upbringing.  I have always had a vivid imagination, love to read, am curious, and crave creativity.

I read Colleen McCullough’s book, “Morgan’s Run,” and was inspired by the riveting story she weaved from a few unique tidbits she had discovered about a relative who was sent to the first penal colonies in Australia and Norfolk Island.  Then I searched on-line for “How to Write a Novel?” and found many suggested methods.  One suggestion was a book for young writers by Walter Dean Myers titled, “Just Write: Here’s How!”  I bought Mr. Myers’ book thinking why not start simple?  I attended writers’ seminars.  I engaged a writing coach, Camille Cole.  I have begun.  Grandma Mary’s story deserves to be told well.

I know I will be rejected; I am accustomed to being turned down in business.  There will be nay-sayers; I never let negativity stop me before.  I know I will be criticized; I will learn from my errors.  I have been told many times, “It’s harder than you think.”  So it is that my admiration for the craft grows every day. 

I am grateful for positive comments about my writing practice; they invigorate me.  I have taken on the unknown before, and my thirst to learn has fueled my progress.  I will dig deep for courage; it has served me well in the past.  I agree with you Mr. Disney, for I have a dream whose time has come. 

By Sheri Nicholls--

....an emerging writer who lives in Kennewick with her Mini-Dachsund, Cooper.  For thirty five years she resided on a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon and was the CFO of an agriculture exporting firm.

Don't be Afraid to.....

Let Your Light Shine

by Gloria Taylor Brown

 Note from author: Although this is not specifically about writing, in many ways, it is EXACTLY the issue that keeps most people from writing.

 

The excitement backstage was palpable, one little girl had already thrown-up and been removed still crying by her distraught mother. I was one of the six remaining little girls, aged 4-6, all dressed in perfect white dresses, with yellow hair ribbons. It was the Sunday after Easter and the church was full. My grandmother placed her hands on my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “You’ll do fine, my dear, I am very proud of you.”  She gave me a hug and pushed me into line, second from the end. A moment later, the choir director motioned for us to come on stage. With much shuffling of feet and a minimum of giggling, we were in front of the congregation. This was my debut, my first time on stage, and I was terrified! I was also very excited. We began singing,“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine….”

We each held up an index finger, pretending it was a candle, with our other hand shaped like a basket that we removed. We sang the song, ending with a flourish with our hands fully open beside our faces, spreading our arms as we sang, “Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”

The minister came on stage, and his rolling orator’s voice began his sermon with the words “From the mouths of little babes…”. The congregation smiled as we were led offstage to our waiting parents and grandparents who greeted us with hugs and kisses. “Grandma,” I whispered, “I remembered all the words!”

What I did not realize is that I had not heard the message.

For the next 25 years, I did my best to hide my light. I played dumb when others thought I was too smart. I carefully avoided anything that would draw attention to me, until my early thirties, when I wasn’t sure I still had a light inside. I even considered snuffing out that light completely, my existence had become so bleak. When life seemed to reach its darkest point, I was blessed by meeting someone who not only could see my light, but also was able to make me believe in myself, once more.  He was able to love me and help me kindle a new brilliance so that I could begin to shine my light.

Still, I was shy, and concerned that if I would “be seen” somehow I would be harmed. I continued to hide my light from most people. I still hadn’t gotten the message.

Then, one winter day, I had a very clear vision of myself as a lighthouse, shining a guiding light out into the darkness. What does this mean?, I wanted to know. My spirit guides told me that this was a role that I could assume.  How could I do this? “Teach”, they said. Weren’t there enough people already out there teaching? In fact, it seemed to me that there was an overabundance of teachers in the world, why should I have to assume this role? Besides, other people were already teaching the subject matters I knew how to teach, how could I compete with these established individuals?  What if I led people astray from their true path? “No lighthouse worries about any other lighthouse”, I was told gently, “each shines their light, to the best of their ability, knowing that as a ship travels down the coast, it will encounter many lighthouses. Some of them it will pay attention to because they are on the boat’s course, others it will not heed, for those are off course”.

I mulled this information over for a long time, not acting on it, still keeping my light hidden. All my insecurities came to the fore, and I could think of a million reasons not to follow my guidance. “What is the worst that could happen?” a voice asked. “I could fail,” I answered immediately.

Suddenly it was blindingly clear to me that I could not fail. By being on this earth, and living my life the best way I knew how, I was a teacher, no matter what I called myself. The lesson I had to teach was the one I had to learn. I realized my life’s mission: to shine my light as brightly as possible, knowing that for someone coming out of the darkness, this might be the only thing they had to save them.

I began to shine my light, letting others see me. Soon more and more opportunities came my way, and I found the more I let others see, the greater the light I had to show. I began to realize that there were many others like me, hiding their lights under a series of bushel baskets. I began working with them, to help them remove the “baskets”, helping them create a new image of themselves. I found that I could provide them with the knowledge of where to get more fuel, so that their lights could grow brighter and brighter. Today, when I am teaching before my student groups, I always hug that little girl inside me and remind both of us that we finally learned the message contained in that simple song.

Now, my message is simple: that each and every one of you to let your individual light shine. You have chosen to incarnate at this time, because the world needs your contribution. You were born with a mission and it is an important one. Your mission is to be the best you can be as a human being, as an example for others, and as a steward here on earth. This is a mission only you can fulfill. There is only one of you, and you are indeed a chosen one. Let your light shine, let all of our lights shine, that we may chase away the darkness. For the one who sees your light may have no other guidance to bring them safely back to homeport. Become a lighthouse, and let it shine!

 

http://www.gatheringofpriestesses.com. 

 

Gloria Taylor Brown’s articles have been published worldwide. Her first article was published in Seventeen Magazine when she was only fourteen. She now uses her writing gifts to create much acclaimed classes and courses designed to enlighten and transform her students, who report: “This course has been an unbelievable help for me and my spiritual growth.” “Very helpful and enlightening, with a sense of healing for me.” “Dynamite....it’s perfect.” For more informations, gloriataylorbrown.com

Johnnie Mazzocco Contributes

Johnnie Mazzocco

Writing Through the Body

           One of the many things I love about my writing practice is that it affords me access to my subconscious on a regular basis. I love knowing I can dig deep and mine endless treasures from within doing something I love.  But sometimes I’m slow, and it takes awhile for me to recognize a great idea, even when it’s right there in front of me.

            As a college writing professor, I always told my students to write with their whole selves. I said this over and over. Every term, to every class. Some students would nod, but I don’t know if they – or I – truly understood what I was asking of them.     My eventual understanding would take twenty years to come to light, long after I experienced flow in my own writing on such a deep level that I was permanently transformed. In fact, it saved my life.

            While I was working on the first draft of my novel, Miranda’s Garden, many strangely “coincidental” events occurred that aligned my life with my main character’s life in ways I could never have dreamed. In short, we became a team: I would tell her story with integrity and honesty, and she would help me navigate the most difficult time in my life.

It would take time and reflection to understand that while writing Miranda’s Garden, I had achieved a level of flow that purged me. Since that time, I have been able to lead a more authentic life and have stayed steady on my path of personal evolution. All thanks to my writing. 

Many years after that experience and after creating my Divination Deck based on the seven main chakras of the body, and becoming familiar with the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Candace Pert, I finally had my eureka moment, and the light of my intuition would swell from a soft, but persistent, glow to a full on beacon.

            Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychology professor, is known for coining the notion of flow: that experience of performing an activity we love and feeling the rest of the world fall away, time becoming non-existent. Pert, a pharmacologist who was doing significant work in mind/body medicine before she died in 2013 and who became dedicated to understanding where our emotions come from, discovered that they’re generated at nodal points in our bodies in the exact location of the chakras. This led her to make this declaration: “Our body is our subconscious mind.”

And then it hit me: If we’re to write in flow, we must access our subconscious, and if our body is our subconscious mind, we must write through the body.

            After this revelation, I was finally able to create what my intuition had been nudging me to do for nearly two decades: my Writing Through the Body™ process that utilizes the seven main chakras to help others banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell their untold stories.

Some days, it’s hard to not think about how many more people I could have helped in the twenty years it took for me understand what my intuition was saying. But truth be told, I wouldn’t have been able to teach the process the way I do now all those years ago.

What I love most about teaching Writing Through the Body™ is showing people how they don’t have to wait for a fickle muse and that they have the power to open themselves up in a deep way to tell more profound stories and to live authentically, with purpose.

Johnnie Mazzocco is a filmmaker, writer, editor, and writing coach, and the creator of Writing Through the Body™. She made a 30-year progression from the mid-west to the west coast and resided in Oregon for 26 years until 2014 when she sold all her belongings, except for what would fit in her car, and set out to house sit in pursuit of her dream: to become an entrepreneur and live her passion and purpose. Little did she know she would find her home at her second house sitting job in Truckee, CA, where she's currently living another dream: to reside in a cabin on a lake in the mountains. Johnnie is fiercely committed to living a life of authenticity, and it is her mission in life to help others do the same. She holds a B.A. in fiction writing, an MA in English and film studies, a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, and an MFA in Digital Arts. 

Writing over the Ego

What keeps us from getting the story onto the page—the one that will knock their socks off? It’s that internal editor, the voice on your shoulder that has no backbone, no faith in your abilities, no nerve.

 If you’re writing a memoir, beware of this sniggeley little creature often referred to as the ego. It’s worried about what people will think, of hurting Aunt Gladys’s feelings—that the whole damn family is going to be mad. Never mind all that because if you’ve made the decision to write your story, you have to make it an honest story. No one wants to read the version of your life where you take out all the juicy stuff—the substance—and everything just sails along and you’ve done all these interesting things and met all these interesting people, but no one ever does anything wrong. No one has kept you up at night, betrayed you, or cheated on you. What about all those lies you told to get into graduate school? That’s going to make a great backstory, let people know you’ve done some brash business in your day—but maybe you just don’t want anyone to know about the real you. If that’s the case, put the manuscript away and take up painting.

       Trouble is, painting has the same danger zones. If the artist makes calculated brush strokes instead of letting the paint brush fly across the canvas without a thought about the critics, the result is flat. The painting lacks authenticity and does not evoke emotion or pull anyone in because there’s no real emotion behind the brush strokes.  It’s too calculated.

      Tell the whole story and don’t self-critique as you go.  Now I’m not saying go ahead and out Uncle Albert, I’m suggesting that the best writing flows freely from a place where the ego and the critical mind gets out of the way, steps aside and lets the story onto the page. Later on, during the second draft, make sure the reader knows what you know. Look for ways to improve your exposition, correct your grammar and enrich your story.

       The best writing is in the rewriting, but the first draft is a blank page upon which you are channeling your story. Knock that twerp off your shoulder, relax, and let the words flow from the deepest, most honest place in your soul with all the talent you have for stringing words together and engaging your readers. It’s a wild party, and you can clean up the mess later.

 

~Camille

schoolhouse2@comcast.net

Storytelling on a Radio on a Ship

On May 24 I pulled on my yoga pants, a fraying shirt from a long-ago running race, and the pair of boots I used to wear on snowy days in Minnesota but that I now clomp around in when I fear I might be going somewhere where something heavy might get dropped my toes. May 24 was a writing day.

So, this writing day was not going to be about actually putting pen to paper but about supporting the greater community, the greater writing community and the greater arts community.
I traveled to North Portland, to Green Anchors, a boat dock just north of the St. Johns Bridge, where a slate-colored 150-foot tugboat built for World War II was being transformed into a studio for the Steam Radio Syndicate, an audio recording collective. Specifically, the project's leader and his merry band of volunteers, among whom I was about to be counted, was readying the ship for its ambitious inaugural event, a four-hour live radio broadcast of music (a set orchestra and a lineup of bands big and small) and storytelling.
As a writer and editor, I was most interested in the latter--that Portland transplant Brian Benson, whose memoir is soon out from Plume, would be reading fiction alongside Joanne Rideout of the famous Ship Report radio program out of Astoria, Oregon, among others, and that they'd be doing so on a converted ship, one had been scheduled for the scrapyard, was so exciting to me.

Repurposing an old ship is a lot like wordsmithing, metaphorically, at least. I selected right-size pipe from the pile onshore and carried the tubes--some a little dinged but still serviceable, some jazzed up with fittings--to the ship, where they'd be used to repair a railing. I pulled electrical cable, choosing the right kind for the job, daisy-chaining when I came up short, taping the ends to protect against the weather. I might have been finding previously cut sentences that hadn't been useful in their original homes but would beautifully fill in gaps in new stories; I might have been writing transitions and shoring up the weaker parts.

And, of course, I was interested in being a part of an exercise in diverse storytelling. We may create alone, but expression only happens in relationship.

Learn more about the Steam Radio Syndicate


Kristin Thiel is a writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. She reads from her most recent publication, an essay in the collection Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship to Shopping, at Powell's on November 4, and fills her days helping others with their words, editing for independently publishing authors, publishing houses, and universities and other businesses. She can be reached at kristin@kristinthiel.com