May is one of my favourite months of the year. The brown winter landscape gradually transforms into a rich tapestry of multiple shades of green, as if the natural world is being painted with the colour of new life as it emerges from sleeping buds.

Encouraged by this natural surge of creative energy, this week I’m raising the bar to the next level with the book I am writing.

Having danced with a few creative daemons and demons in the last couple of weeks, I’m now heading more deeply into the conscious uncertainty that is the hallmark of this stage of the Conscious Writing process.

Staying balanced between focus and flow, showing up regularly, and remaining open to all possibilities, I’ll be interested to see where this journey into the Mystery eventually leads!

Inspiring Interviews
Alongside all of this, one of the aspects of my work that I love is speaking with the genuinely inspiring authors and international experts who contribute their time freely for our monthly Events.

Each year we create a compilation of the six best interviews of the year in an audio CD set which forms part of the Welcome Pack that FULL Members receive. Now it is time to make the Best of 2012 Interviews available for everyone to benefit from.

We are delighted to offer an introductory price until Friday 31 May so if you’d like to know The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, The Power of Storytelling to Find Your Voice, the Four Noble Truths for Writers, how you can Create Time to Write, and Develop a Book Marketing Plan, read more here.

Date for Your Diary
Looking ahead, if you missed the Live in London Conscious Writing workshop last month and would like to experience this deep approach to writing in the company of other Conscious Writers, you have another opportunity on Saturday 15 June at the Isbourne Holistic Centre in Cheltenham. For more details and to book your place, click here

Finally, we have a fabulous guest article from one of our IACCW Experts Eric Maisel this month on Confident Creating. Enjoy reading it here and taking action on Eric’s suggestions. I’ll look forward to catching up with you again next month.

To you conscious & creative success!

PS This “Welcome” note is reproduced from the latest issue of the monthly IACCW Journal. If you’re not receiving our newsletter regularly, register with your name and email address in the Start Here box at the top of this page.

I am delighted to introduce this guest article from IACCW Expert

If you want to live a creative life and make your mark in some competitive art field like writing, film-making, the visual arts, or music, and if at the same time you want to live an emotionally healthy life full of love and satisfaction, you need an intimate understanding of certain key ideas and how they relate to the creative process.

One key idea is that you must act confidently whether or not you feel confident. You need to manifest confidence in every stage of the creative process if you want to get your creative work accomplished. Here’s what confidence looks like throughout the creative process.

Stage 1. Wishing

‘Wishing’ is a pre-contemplation stage where you haven’t really decided that you intend to create. You dabble at making art, you don’t find your efforts very satisfying, and you don’t feel that you go deep all that often. The confidence that you need to manifest during this stage of the process is the confidence that you are equal to the rigors of creating. If you don’t confidently accept the reality of process and the reality of difficulty you may never really get started.

Stage 2. Incubation/Contemplation

During this second stage of the process you need to be able to remain open to what wants to come rather than defensively settling on a first idea or an easy idea. The task is remaining open and not settling for something that relieves your anxiety and your discomfort. The confidence needed here is the confidence to stay open.

Stage 3. Choosing Your Next Subject

Choosing is a crucial part of the creative process. At some point you need the confidence to say, “I am ready to work on this.” You need the confidence to name a project clearly (even if that naming is “Now I go to the blank canvas without a pre-conceived idea and just start”), to commit to it, and to make sure that you aren’t leaking confidence even as you choose this project.

Stage 4. Starting Your Work

When you start a new creative work you start with certain ideas for the work, certain hopes and enthusiasms, certain doubts and fears – that is, you start with an array of thoughts and feelings, some positive and some negative. The confidence you need at that moment is the confidence that you can weather all those thoughts and feelings and the confidence to go into the unknown.

Stage 5. Working

Once you are actually working on your creative project, you enter into the long process of fits and starts, ups and downs, excellent moments and terrible moments – the gamut of human experiences that attach to real work. For this stage you need the confidence that you can deal with your own doubts and resistances and the confidence that you can handle whatever the work throws at you.

Stage 6. Completing

At some point you will be near completing the work. It is often hard to complete what we start because then we are obliged to appraise it, learn if it is good or bad, deal with the rigors of showing and selling, and so on. The confidence required during this stage is the confidence to weather the very ideas of appraisal, criticism, rejection, disappointment and everything else that we fear may be coming once we announce that the work is done.

Stage 7. Showing

A time comes when we are obliged to show our work. The confidence needed here is not only the confidence to weather the ideas of appraisal, criticism, and rejection but the confidence to weather the reality of appraisal, criticism, and rejection. Like so many other manifestations of confidence, the basic confidence here sounds like “Bring it on!” You are agreeing to let the world do its thing and announcing that you can survive any blows that the world delivers.

Stage 8. Selling

A confident seller can negotiate, think on her feet, make pitches and presentations, advocate for her work, explain why her work is wanted, and so on. You don’t have to be over-confident, exuberant, over the top – you simply need to get yourself to the place of being a calmly confident seller, someone who first makes a thing and then sells it in a business-like manner.

New Incubation and Contemplation

While you are showing and selling your completed works you are also incubating and contemplating new projects and starting the process all over again. The confidence required here is the confident belief that you have more good ideas in you. You want to confidently assert that you have plenty more to say and plenty more to do – even if you don’t know what that “something” is quite yet.

Simultaneous and Shifting States and Stages

I’ve made the creative process sound rather neat and linear and usually it is anything but. Often we are stalled on one thing, contemplating another thing, trying to sell a third thing, and so on. The confidence needed throughout the process is the quiet, confident belief that you can stay organized, successfully handle all of the thoughts and feelings going on inside of you, get your work done, and manage everything. This is a juggler’s confidence—it is you announcing, “You bet that I can keep all of these balls in the air!”

Manifest confidence throughout the creative process. Failing to manifest confidence at any stage will stall the process. It isn’t easy living the artist’s life: the work is taxing, the shadows of your personality interfere, and the art marketplace if fiercely competitive. If you learn some key ideas, for instance that you must act confidently whether or not you feel confident, you give yourself the best chance possible for a productive and rewarding life in the arts.

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Eric Maisel is the author of Making Your Creative Mark and twenty other creativity titles including Mastering Creative Anxiety, Brainstorm, Creativity for Life, and Coaching the Artist Within. America’s foremost creativity coach, he is widely known as a creativity expert who coaches individuals and trains creativity coaches through workshops and keynotes nationally and internationally. He has blogs on the Huffington Post and Psychology Today and writes a column for Professional Artist Magazine. Visit him online at www.ericmaisel.com

Based on the new book Making Your Creative Mark ©2013 by Eric Maisel. Published with permission of New World Library www.newworldlibrary.com

Most writers wonder at times what the heck is going on inside their heads when they want to write, but can’t. Why do we make progress with our writing for while, then – for no reason we can discern – sabotage our own best efforts?

When we understand what’s happening inside our brain, we can learn to overcome resistance in the moment and rewire our brain in the long term to develop productive, sustainable writing habits.

In this session you will:

• Learn about your brain in easy-to-understand, layperson’s terms
• Understand why a limbic system takeover trumps your writing commitment and creativity
• Discover what you can do to reverse those limbic system takeovers and put your creative cortex back in the driver’s seat
• Recognize why habits are far more valuable and reliable than discipline or will power
• Identify the three habits that support the writing life
• Decide which habits you’re ready to adopt and design your commitment plan to build those habits
• Gain appreciation for your own efforts so far, and be reassured that you can be the writer you want to be and the world needs you to be.

Rosanne Bane, M.A. is a creativity coach, teaching artist, speaker and author of Around the Writer’s Block: Using Brain Science to Solve Writer’s Resistance and Dancing in the Dragon’s Den: Rekindling the Creative Fire in Your Shadow. A veteran teaching artist of more than 20 years, Rosanne specializes in helping creative people understand why it’s so hard (at times) to do the very thing they love to do. She has helped thousands of writers, artists and creative people of all sorts achieve their professional goals and make their creative dreams reality. See www.RosanneBane.com and www.BaneOfYourResistance.com

Date: Thursday 9th May Time: 16:00 BST / 11:00 EST

Want to listen to this teleseminar interview for free but not yet an IACCW member?

Find out about how to do so and discover the other benefits of becoming a FREE or FULL member of the International Association of Conscious & Creative Writers (IACCW) by clicking here

The key is to … live in the light of inquiry,
not seeking immediate answers and
simply allowing the process to unfold.

The ability to embrace mystery, to stand bravely
in front of the unknown, and to encourage
the process of discovery is a key requirement …”

David Ulrich

Conscious Writers look within and feel the resonance of truth,
then follow their inner impulse in whatever direction it takes.

To your conscious & creative success!

PS Please take a moment to add your comments below here

The prolonged cold weather may have delayed the start of spring but the seeds for our creative work can be planted and nurtured by the warmth of our inspiration at any moment we choose.

The seeds for my new book have already germinated, and I am very much looking forward to sharing the principles and guiding participants through the process of Conscious Writing at the one day workshop on Sunday 21 April. Read more here.

A couple of weeks ago I spent an enjoyable half day in a recording studio and created a Conscious Writing audio program which was a new experience for me. Adding some original music to the spoken word content was great fun, and we’ll be making this audio available on 21 April ahead of its general release when the book is finally published.

Conscious Writing Scholarship

In the meantime, I am delighted to announce the results of the Conscious Writing Scholarship, and many congratulations go to Shelley Hawkins (1st place), Priya Mahtani (2nd place) and Jeanine Hanneman (3rd place).

We had a large number of applications and the quality of submissions was very high so thank you to everyone who took part. It has been such a positive experience that we plan to offer the Scholarship again next year so you might like to make a note in your diary to have your submission ready!

Two New Full Member Benefits

Supporting Conscious Writers is an important part of our work here at the IACCW and this month we have added two new Full Member Benefits for extra support:

(i) Guest Articles – Full Members now have the opportunity to have a guest article published in the IACCW Journal and posted to the IACCW blog. Our first Full Member to take advantage of this new Benefit is Lynda Monk and you can read her article here.

(ii) Published Works - we are also in the process of creating a new page for the IACCW website on which we will feature published works from Full Members and coaching clients.

These can be books, e-books, audio CDs or any other work that has been self or traditionally published as long as it is for sale on Amazon. If you would like to submit your published work, email us on info@iaccw.com and we’ll send you more information.

Finally, I discovered when I was writing this month’s article on silence that Wednesday 24 April is International Noise Awareness Day.

I am delighted to discover that the benefits of silence are becoming so widely documented that they have led to days like this for promoting awareness. Enjoy reading the article and benefitting from incorporating more silence into your conscious & creative living.

Have a wonderfully conscious & creative month!

This “Welcome” note is reproduced from the latest issue of the monthly IACCW Journal. If you’re not receiving our newsletter regularly, register with your name and email address in the Start Here box at the top of this page.

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.”

Silence is one of the most significant components of the creative writing process. It is the alpha and omega of Conscious Writing, and invites readers into the essence of the stories you are telling and the ideas you are sharing.

Writing with silence leads to active participation from your readers who use their imagination to complete the picture your words are painting in the most meaningful way for them as individuals.

Powerful writing is punctuated with silence that creates space for your readers to experience the living reality beyond and through your words. As a result, your writing has immense depth and a memorable impact.

“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.” Elbert Hubbard

An understanding of the significance of silence goes back to the dawn of time. The Hindu creation myth tells us that before this time began, there was no heaven, no earth and no space between. Lord Vishnu lay sleeping in the coils of a giant cobra when a humming sound emerged from the depths of silence to fill the emptiness with energy. Vishnu awoke and commanded the world to be created.

Modern science now concurs with ancient teachings about energy being at the core of everything in existence. One of the forms that energy takes is sound, and sound arises from silence.

The Benefits of Silence

The benefits of silence are becoming widely appreciated as the levels of noise in the contemporary world increases.

Thoreau wrote of silence as “a universal refuge” and studies have been done to show that silent meditation, for example, improves the ability of practitioners to concentrate(1). We even have an International Noise Awareness Day (this year on Wednesday 24 April)!

As Conscious Writers, silence enables us to:

• access the deepest levels of truth and insight that are usually lost in the distraction of external and internal noise
• hear the still, small sound of our authentic voice beyond the perpetual chatter of our everyday thoughts
• follow the golden threads of inspiration and the guidance of our intuition
• recharge our creative spirit by connecting to our creative core
• feel a sense of connection to the whole of creation through the whispers of our heart.

To experience the benefits of incorporating silence into your creative writing process, try one or more of the following suggestions regularly over the next 21 days:

1. Begin or strengthen your resolve to make time and space for silence daily. First thing in the morning is a perfect time for enjoying silence. If necessary, set your alarm for 15 or 20 minutes earlier than usual, and simply listen to the silence that lies beyond any noise that may be present.
2. Eat your dinner in silence at least three times a week. Pay full attention to the sensations of eating and be mindful of how the silence increases your awareness of all the senses associated with eating. You are likely to enjoy the taste and texture of your food a great deal more this way!
3. Turn off the usual sources of noise in your home for an extra hour a day. This includes the television, music, and the radio. Instead, use this time to become more accustomed to silence and enjoy the inner and outer peace it brings. Choose silence over noise regularly from now on.
4. Before you write, take at least 5 minutes to close your eyes and sit in silence. This practice alone will benefit your experience of writing and the quality of what you write. Even a few moments of silence enables you to become more grounded and to write from your centre rather than from your intellect alone.
5. Once a week, dive more deeply into silence with a practice such as this:

• Sit in a relaxed but alert posture and make sure you won’t be disturbed.
• Deepen and observe your breathing to still your mind.
• Listen to sound of your in-breath and your out-breath like the ocean waves in constant flow.
• Notice the silent pause between each in-breath and each out-breath.
• Focus on the silence as a gateway to the mystery beyond the everyday world where you and the silence ultimately become one and you experience the wholeness of being that is your natural state. Enjoy!

Q4U: What experience do you already have of the value of silence to your creative writing process and to your life generally? Share your comments below.

1: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/27/11483.abstract

___________________________________________________________________

© Julia McCutchen 2013. All Rights Reserved.

If you want to use this article in your ezine or on your website I’d be happy for you to do so as long as you use the complete article, including the copyright line, and include the following paragraph in its entirety:

Julia McCutchen is an author, conscious writing coach, intuitive mentor, and the founder & creative director of the International Association of Conscious & Creative Writers (IACCW). A former publisher of books on spiritual and personal development, Julia teaches conscious creativity, conscious writing and a holistic approach to writing for publication that combines the inner journey of creative self-discovery with the practical steps required for writing and publishing books. She is the author of The Writer’s Journey: From Inspiration to Publication. For more information and a FREE Special Report on Discovering Your Authentic Voice – on the page and in the world, visit www.iaccw.com.

Julia McCutchen interviews Suze Casey

Suze Casey explains that she “writes because she cannot not write”. Yet, moving from writer to widely published author took more courage than she knew she could muster. She had to face all the vulnerabilities, doubts and fears she had developed from the responses and feedback she had ever received. She had to come to know and value herself in a stronger and more committed way.

In this interview, you will discover:

• how to enter into – and out of – your creative space with ease
• an effective and efficient way to move through writer’s block or any other form of doubt or fear
• how to effectively acknowledge what has been in the way and give yourself permission to speak openly from the heart
• a simple decision-making process that will open the doors to new ways of writing
• how to recognize your authentic voice and have it become your way of being – in all areas of your life.

The developer of the Belief Re-patterning® technique, Suze Casey has always been fascinated with the mysteries of the human mind. She spent twenty years as an educator, and since 1999 has completely followed her passion – supporting others to learn, grow and embrace their potential. She is the author of Belief Re-patterning: The Amazing Technique for “Flipping the Switch” to Positive Thoughts (Hay House) and travels extensively offering workshops, seminars and conference keynotes as well as maintaining a vital international coaching practice.  See www.suzecasey.com and www.beliefrepatterning.com

Date: Thursday 4th April Time: 16:00 BST / 11:00 EST

Want to listen to this teleseminar interview for free but not yet an IACCW member?

Find out about how to do so and discover the other benefits of becoming a FREE or FULL member of the International Association of Conscious & Creative Writers (IACCW) by clicking here

Shunryu Suzuki

Conscious Writers approach writing with a Beginner’s Mind.

To your conscious & creative success!

PS Please take a moment to add your comments below.

PPS Our next IACCW FREE & FULL Member event is on
How Conscious Writers Can Flip the Switch
from Inner Critic to Inner Coach
with Suze Casey on THURSDAY 4 APRIL
Read more here.

The arrival of March always feels full of potential as the promise of spring inspires us to plant new seeds and nurture the creative projects we are drawn to make a commitment to.

This year, I am following a strong inner impulse to write my next book, and one week after sharing the news with my social media friends, I am happy to say that it’s off to a good start!

It feels like eons ago that I wrote the last one so I am approaching this book with a beginner’s mind and setting a clear intention to honour the writing time I schedule in my diary as sacred. The book is called Conscious Writing and I am very much looking forward to sharing it with you later this year.

In the meantime, Conscious Writing lies at the core of all that we teach and guide writers to experience here at the IACCW as it is a sacred and powerful approach to creative writing.

Our belief in the transformative impact of conscious writing is such that we have created a Scholarship which is an extension of the Conscious Writing Mentor Program as a new level of contribution to aspiring and established writers.

As a courtesy reminder, the deadline for submitting an application for the Conscious Writing Scholarship is this Friday 15 March. Read more here.

We also have a Conscious Writing Live in London one day workshop coming up on Sunday 21 April when you will have the chance to work with me and your fellow conscious writers in person to experience the process and results for yourself. Read more and book your place here.

Finally, today is Nyepi, the Balinese New Year, and I love the fact that this day is celebrated by observing a day of silent reflection by the 4.5 million people who live on the island. It is a beautiful tradition and I would love to encourage you to enjoy the restorative power of silence by taking at least 15 minutes today for your own silent reflection.

Have a wonderfully conscious & creative month!

PS A new photo for a new era!

PPS This “Welcome” note is reproduced from the latest issue of the monthly IACCW Journal. If you’re not receiving our newsletter regularly, register with your name and email address in the Start Here box at the top of this page.

I am delighted to introduce this guest post on mindful writing by Satya Robyn from “Writing Our Way Home”. Enjoy.

“Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.” ~ Basho

As writers, one of our most important tasks is to accurately record the truth – whether this be the literal truth, if we are writing factually, or the complex psychological truth which can be revealed through the medium of fiction. I think mindful writing can help us to do this, and in this article I’ll tell you how you can use mindfulness to become more truthful in your own writing.

There are many different definitions of mindfulness. For me, the essence of mindfulness is paying a particular kind of attention to the world – attention which is as unfiltered by our own selves as we can manage.

Everything we see and everything we experience is coloured by our sense of our self. Three people walking into the same garden will see three completely different gardens. The first, a proud experienced gardener, might notice the rare plants. The second, a child, might see the mud and want to squelch about in it. The third, a perfectionist, might notice the untidy corners and the clematis which needs pruning.

“Me-coloured” Glasses

It is normal for us to see the world, ourselves and each other through these “me–coloured” glasses, but it does limit the amount of information we’re able to receive. The perfectionist might value order so highly that they are blind to the joys of messiness, and the proud gardener might get so caught up in their expertise that they forget that they still have things to learn from other gardeners and from their plants.

We like to ‘know who we are’, and so once our minds are set upon what kind of person we are we are reluctant to change. This is true even for the parts of our image that our negative – most of us know someone who is convinced they ‘can’t draw’ or that they’re ‘not any good’ at something when we can see evidence to the contrary.

These me–coloured glasses are both an advantage and a disadvantage for us as writers. Our experienced gardener might write a fine technical book about rare plants, but they might forget to include their joy at the shy beauty of hellebores or the sweet perfume of jasmine. Our perfectionist might never allow themselves to loosen up when writing and let in some life–giving chaos.

The Truth-Seeking of Mindfulness

Becoming mindful helps us to tune in to what is outside of us, and to begin to notice what we haven’t noticed before. It allows us to broaden our notion of ‘who we are’, and to include more of the truth of the world (and others, and ourselves) in our writing.

We can use the truth–seeking of mindfulness in our writing in two different ways.

The first is using mindfulness in our writing directly. This might involve being mindful during our research process, and paying attention when we flick through books about marathon running, trying not to make our minds up prematurely about what kind of marathon runner our protagonist might be. It might involve using mindfulness when we observe the objects we are writing about, just like Basho, trying to learn more about the pine by going to the pine. It might involve being mindful of our own process, and letting the writing go where it wants to go rather than where we think it ought to go, especially if we are feeling resistant.

The second is the use of mindfulness to become better writers (and hopefully also better human beings) in a less direct way. We can take up a mindfulness practice – ten minutes of sitting quietly every day and paying attention to our breath, or ten minutes in our garden every day, letting our gaze sweep over the different plants, noticing how they look different in the morning light or the evening light, spotting a tiny red beetle on a sage leaf. Over time these regular practices will help us to cling less tightly to our selves, and to let more of the ‘other’ in.

Mindful Writing –the Practice

This article has been whistle-stop tour through a few ways in which we can use mindfulness as writers. We can learn about mindfulness through reading about it, but the best way of discovering the benefits of mindfulness is to practice it. If you do one thing as a result of this article, make a commitment to trying out a short mindfulness practice, every day for a week.

One thing you could do is to pay close attention to one thing (the patches of water on the road, the smell of toast drifting up the stairs…) and write down what you observe as accurately as you can. Write in prose or poetry, enjoy playing with the words, but above all keep going back to your experience of the object you’re writing about. We call this very simple mindful writing tool a ‘small stone’. Pay attention, let go of your self, and then record what you experience.

Go to the bamboo to learn about the bamboo.

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Satya Robyn is a novelist, psychotherapist, Buddhist priest & the co–founder of the mindful writing company, Writing Our Way Home, with her husband Kaspa. Read more about small stones here, and take the small stone challenge with their Mindful Writing Booster. Her best selling-novel ‘The Most Beautiful Thing‘ follows Joe to Amsterdam to stay with his quirky aunt, and her most recent novel is ‘Small Kindnesses‘.