Publication/Think it Real

In his book, Infinite Possibilities, Mike Dooley says, "Manifesting our dreams isn't about hard work--it's about belief, expectation, and above all, knowing the truth about our place in the universe."

Dooley's words are the perfect introduction to an exercise we were asked to perform in my seventh Plug In class with Janet Conner:  

Visit and fall in love with your book's neighborhood.

 by bookchen

Yes, even for those of us who aren't published yet.  Especially for those of us who aren't published yet.  This exercise is one of intention and creative visualization to help get us there. 

The first part of the exercise goes like this:

• Walk into the store where you'd like your book to appear and up to the exact spot where it will be displayed.  This is your spot.  Study it, name it, fall in love with it. 
• Check out what other authors are there.  These are your neighbors. 
• Study the authors' names, the names of their agents and publishers; study the books' titles and subtitles, their key messages, appearance, layout, font, and design.
• Now, visualize your book in this neighborhood--your neighborhood.  Believing leads to feeling and feeling makes it happen. 

Your book's publication is only a thought away.

I write Visionary Fiction, and because this genre does not yet merit its own shelf space, it's housed in the Metaphysical section.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), this section of the bookstore is almost exclusively made up of nonfiction.  The only only Visionary writers I've seen there are Paul Coelho (The Alchemist) and James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy) . Ever heard of them?

Anyway, when I walked into Borders, the authors I found in my immediate

neighborhood (other than Paul Coelho) were of the mind-body-spirit variety. To my left, Mike Dooley (Infinite Possibilities) and Larry Dossey (Recovering the Soul, A Scientific and Spiritual Search), to my right, Allison DuBois (The Medium), John Edward (Infinite Quest), and Jonathan H. Ellerby (Return to the Sacred, Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening).

I liked this neighborhood.  I felt comfortable there.  The book shelf became my vision board, showing me the end result of what I wished to experience.

I imagined readers (spiritual seekers, women, men in touch with their divine feminine) coming up to my spot on the shelf, selecting my books, opening them, smiling, and then taking them to check out. 

From bookshelf to nightstand.  Yes!


The next part of the assignment goes as follows:

• Start visualizing your work in your neighborhood. 
• Draw your work inside your neighborhood on a piece of paper and stick it on your wall at home and label it by a name that speaks to you.
• Design an ad for your work.
• Say thank you in advance to your neighbors for welcoming you there.
• Act as if you belong.
• Read your neighbhors' books, let them know you appreciate their work, friend them on Facebook, become their fan, follow them on Twitter, visit their websites, read their blogs.

Define your dream in every imaginable detail, using your imagination as a tool to reach your goal.  Pretending is powerful.  Think it real. 

I bought Mike Dooley's Infinite Possibilities and Jonathan Ellerby's Return to the Sacred.  A quick scan of their work told me we were on the same page.  I couldn't wait to dig deeper.

Now, for the last part of the exercise: 

• Put your belief in motion.
• If you haven't already, start producing work for your neighborhood. 
• Rededicate yourself to your craft. 
• Set goals and start moving toward them.
• Focus on the end result.

In other words, get to work! 

You have the power to achieve your publication dreams.  Once you think it and believe it, look out world..

For more on Janet Connor and her Plug In class, visit: Writing Down Your Soul.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Author Brand/Who Cares?

 by Bakingdom

Authors who want to break into publishing must ask themselves:

1. What kind of people hold the same beliefs, purpose, and energy as I do?
2. What about my work will reside within the hearts and minds of my readers?
3. What about my work will attract partners and support?
4. How will readers respond to my work?

In other words, Who will care and why?

In a previous post called What's Your Brand, I talked about what I learned in Janet Conner's "Plug In" telecourse about "Spiritual Branding."

According to Janet, "A spiritual brand is so much more than words; it is a powerful force that radiates the belief, purpose, focus, and energy you hold for and around your work."

She urged all course members to zero in and focus on their spiritual brands.

Why?

Because by doing so, we would attract customers and partners who hold the same beliefs, purpose, and energy in the world.

Our spiritual brand, Janet said, must articulate clearly what we do, express why our work matters, and show how the world would be a better place because our work is in it.

Here is what I came up with in response:

My Brand Statement

by Mikey a('-'*)

Everyone has the capacity for spiritual and emotional freedom.

Through my novels--which synthesize heart and mind, science and spirituality--I inspire people to activate their gifts, retire their excuses, and stand in their own authority.

As more people release their greater potential into the universe, a greater consciousness will be forged for the benefit of all.

###

Next, Janet encouraged us to decide what we wanted our readers to say in response to our work.

Here's what I came up with:

My Readers' Walk Away Impressions

 by AlicePopkorn

Through my novels, readers will feel encouraged to step away from conditioned responses and follow their intuition and internal guidance to step into their own life stories.

My stories will open their eyes to sources of inspiration outside of the status quo to help them negotiate the complexities of their lives.

###

With my brand statement and readers' walk away impressions firmly in mind, I can zero in on who my potential readers are and find a way to meet their wants and needs.

That's where my author platform comes in, a subject of many future posts, I'm sure.

For more information about Janet Conner and her telecourses, go to Writing Down Your Soul.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Versatile Blogger Award.

Rosi Hollinbeck, at The Write Stuff , just awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award.

She said she learns a lot from my blog about blogging and writing. 

This is such a compliment, because that's one of my main purposes here at Enter the Between, to share what I've learned so far about blogging and in my ten-plus years of writing fiction.

So much of what I know about both blogging and writing came from other writers, who so generously shared what they knew.

We need to stick together as a community, forge alliances, and promote and mentor one another.  What goes around, comes around.  A good deed is never wasted. 

Thank you so much, Rosi, for doing your part in promoting a fellow writer.

Rosi is a pre-published writer and works almost entirely on children's books, stories, poems, and articles.  She spent many years teaching high school English and is in love with words, books, theatre, and related subjects.

Her children's short story, Helen's Home Run, just won first place in The Foster City Writer's Contest children’s division.

Congratulations, Rosi.

Now, as part of my commitment to sharing what I know and as a thank you for stopping by, I want to share some writing/media resources put together by Janet Conner, author of Writing Down Your Soul and presenter of the Plug In Telecourse.

Facebook

• How to use facebook
• How to set up a fanpage

Google

• Google Alerts

Tools for key word research 

• Key Words

Fun Blogs for Writers

• Vibrant Nation for women over 50
• Red Room
• She Writes

List of Blogs by Writers

• The Internet Writing Journal
• Writing White Papers 
• Squidoo/Best Writing Blogs

As always, thanks for stopping by.

6 Ways to Add Vibrant Partnerships to your Author Platform

The big lesson that I learned from Janet Conner's sixth Plug In class, How to Build Your Author Platform, is:

Writers need vibrant, creative partnerships.

I'm sure you've heard before that an author platform is mandatory to your publishing career.  You've also heard that in building a platform you need to blog, social network, and use video sites.  In other words, you have to do your own marketing and promotion.   

by frankdasilva



"Publishers want to know how many people you know," said Plug In guest Jennifer Hill Robenalt, a 20-year communications pro and the principal of Robin Hill Media.  "Whether that's fair or not, or effective or not, it's all we have to measure how big our audience truly is."

But what you may not know is that all of your platform-building could be for naught if you don't bring people into your fold who can collaborate in helping you access your full creative and marketing potential. 

Even if you're the type who likes to go solo, there are times you'll need powerful partnerships and alliances.

Do yo need a website designer?  Do you need a publicist? 

"Own up to what you need," said Gail McMeekin, Plug in guest and author of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women.  "Then carefully bring in someone who aliens to your purpose."

Jennifer Hill Robenalt went on to say, "Every time I have a new partnership, I have a new cheerleader for my work." 

Writers need partnerships to cross reference and promote each other, share contacts, network, act as speakers and teachers, motivate, and provide gifts to each other's audience. 

And how does a writer forge such partnerships?

Jennifer shared 6 ways:

1. Use Technorati, Google blog, and other author's blog rolls to seek out people who are doing similar work and are like-minded.  Forge relationships with them online, comment on their blogs, and on Facebook.  Collaborate content.  Guest blog and vice versa.
2. Create a dream list of people you want to form partnerships with.  On every website there's a contact or media tab.  Find the publicist or contact the author directly.  Tell them you are a blogger and would like to be on their "media list."  You may be invited on blogging calls or virtual book tours. 
3. Create your own mini media empire. You tube, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and Blogger are all free.  Add a video to your blog. All you need is a flip camera to make videos of yourself when you speak in public, etc. Create a buzz.
4. Start an Internet radio show.  Blog Talk Radio is free.  All you need is a computer and a phone.
5. Check out sites such as Help a Reporter Out, where journalists and national reporters are looking for sources.
6. List the top ten places you want to see yourself featured, then follow them and invest time in them.

The opportunities for creating vibrant partnerships are endless.

Share contacts. Share ideas. What goes around, comes around. A good deed is never wasted.

Thanks for stopping by,

The Creative Life/Tips for Writers and Artists



Photo credit:  Stephen Poff

What specific practices, rituals, or habits do writers and artists use or evoke to assist the creative flow? 

That's one of the questions Janet Conner asked of the following four guests on Bonus Night of her Plug In Telecourse:

1. Gail McMeekin (writer and creativity coach)
2. Mary Anne Radmacher (artist and writer)
3. Rebecca LoCicero (writer and medium)
4. Ann Hartley (Dutch master painter)

Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, their answers didn't vary all that much.  In fact, I can narrow them all down to ten:

1. Consult your guides.  The creative path can be lonely.  Gail McMeekin said it helps to consult with guides (Secret #7 from her book, 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women), be it for inspiration or spiritual support.  Guides come in many forms, including books, groups, and mentors.  Define your need and what style of guidance will support that need, and be careful about who you invite into your circle.  Mary Anne Radmacher added, "Your trusted guide will hold up a mirror to yourself."  
2. Focus.  Gail uses journaling to organize her thoughts and set priorities, because often she has more ideas than she can accommodate at once.   Mary Anne chooses a book to keep company with for four months at a time.  She reads until something "zings" her and then she focuses on that for the day.  Mary Anne said to focus on being productive in your own soul and things will come to you. 
3. Play.  Mary Anne says that for her work is play.  Through play, she brings information from the world around her into her art.  
4. Relax into your art and take time to feed your soul.  Stress and worry block the creative flow.  Ann Hartley loses herself in her work.  When she paints, she actually feels as if she's rearranging the surface of the canvas with her hands.  She also said that doing nothing is sometimes absolutely important.  Rebecca LoCicero recommended taking Sabbaths and sabbaticals.  
5. Send away your inner critic.  That's your monkey mind, and we're all familiar with this one.  But it's nice to have this reaffirmed by four successful writers and artists. 
6. Be kind to yourself and don't give up your own power.  Ann said, "everything exists within yourself.  Have faith in that."  Mary Anne added, "Don't give up your own power.  Have faith in your own work and talent and power."
7. Keep an open mind.  This suggestion also came from Ann.  She said that negative space is as important and non-negative space, what you leave out is as important as what you leave in.  This goes with Mary Anne's suggestion to bring information from the world around you into your art.   "We are all dealing with symbol," she said. 
8. Accept.  Rebecca said that acceptance through acknowledgment leads to enlightenment
9. Shoot for the moon.  I know, you've heard this before, but why not?  That's what all of these guest artists do with great success.
10. Have a grateful heart.  As with all of the answers above, there was an overall consensus on this one.  Gratitude works wonders in assisting an artist's creative flow.

I took the liberty of reading "between the lines" and coming up with a few generalities of my own after listening to these guest artists speak. 

• All of these talented women have, in one form or another, stepped out of the box and into what Janet Conner calls "The Intersection," Elizabeth Berg calls, "The Open" (Escaping into the Open, the art of writing true), and I call "The Between." 
• They have plugged into the Intelligence that exists as potentialities around them and aligns to their own particular talent, often relying on intuition and extrasensory powers to do so.
• They live multidimensional lives and know how to connect with their inner core (what Margaret Stortz calls "inner spaces of refreshment"), and feed their soul. 
• They are open to life's messengers, knowing that whatever catches their attention is trying to tell them something and that whatever they pay attention to will grow. 
• They have a flexible response to life and know there aren't any wrong turns, only new ones. 
• They use their imagination to create something extraordinary out of the everyday.
• They are the writers, actors, and directors of their own stories.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Guides/Guidance to the Hidden Dimension of Life



h.koppdelaney

Deepak Chopra calls it The Hidden Dimension of Life

James Redfield calls it The Responsive Universe.

Robert Butler calls it The White Hot Center of The Unconscious.

Kabir Helminski calls it the Threshold Between Two Worlds.

Janet Conner calls it The Intersection.

It's the dimension outside of the normal five senses where your earthly and spiritual lives overlap. 

It's where artists find inspiration, where scientists find breakthroughs, where athletes find super-human strength, and where mystics find God. 

It's also where an average person like you and me can go for deeper understanding when the intellect can find none.   

h.koppdelaney


Consider it a zone where the analytic flow stops and you enter the sensual flow of experience from the unconscious, sort of like an awakened dream state or the theta brainwave state.

Call it what you will, we are suspended between an outer world and the mystery of the inner world.  And it pays to expand the size of this meeting point and the frequency of your visits there.

Why?

Well, for one thing, it can help expand your God-given talents so you can share them with the world.

But how?

Let me start by passing on some of the things I've discovered in Janet Conner's third Plug In tele-class.

(In previous posts, Plug In With Janet Conner and  Plug In, Janet Conner, and Synchronicity , I shared some of what I'd learned in our first two classes about The Intersection and ways to expand it.)

In class three, we discussed Messengers and Guides (to The Intersection/Hidden Dimension of Life) with guest expert Margo Mastromarchi.

Margo talked about how to recognize our guides, how they come, and how to work with them.

Guides come in many forms, of which the following are just a sample:

• Angels
• Spirit Guides
• Animals
• Ancestors
• Masters and Teachers
• The person standing next to you

Guidance also comes in many forms, among them:

• Intuition
• Gut feeling
• Emotions
• Synchronicity
• Dreams
• Prayer
• Meditation 
• Literature
• The media

The tools to increase your access to guides and their guidance are, again, too many to mention here, but my overall take on what I've learned so far is that you should:

1. Ask for guidance:  Plant the subject in your mind and then go about your business.   
2. Have faith that the guidance/messages you need will come:  Don't try to force them.  They will appear when you least expect them to.
3. Be open:  Pay attention.  Keep a notebook handy.  Messages are bombarding you all the time.  they can move in and out of your consciousness like dreams.   
4. Let your body's wisdom point the way. 

"When a moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss." --Boris Pasternak                  

If you're interesting in learning more about how to awaken to messages all around you, here are some books and websites you might enjoy:

• Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Conner.
• Awakening to Your life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• How to Know God; The Soul's Journey Into the Mystery of Mysteries, by Deepak Chopra.
• God and the Evolving Universe by James Redfield and Michael Murphy.
• The Celestine Vision by James Redfield
• Angel Messenger.
• Making Sense of Synchronicity.
• Center for Akashic Studies.

Thanks for stopping by,

Margaret

Plug In With Janet Conner

What makes writers happy, besides working on their craft, of course, is connecting with other writers to delve into the unknown and explore each other's minds for fresh ideas. 

Add to that a team of experts and inspirational speakers and you've just kicked up the happiness factor a notch or two.

So you can imagine my reaction when I read about Plug In, The Intersection for Writers and Other Creatives, a twenty-week, eleven class teleseries inspired and led by Janet Conner, author of Writing Down Your Soul.

Janet Conner, a writer I'd recently friended on FaceBook, posted a notice about "Plug In" on my FB page, which immediately sparked my interest.  I followed the link to her website Writing Down Your Soul, and saw that her Plug In course was to start February 8. 

Wouldn't it be awesome to be part of that course, I thought and then moved on to other things. 

Little did I know that I'd end up taking the course and thereby step into the Intersection, where new and powerful spiritual practices merge with craft.

So, what do Plug In participants do? 

At Writing Down Your Soul all is explained, but, in the mean time, here is a partial list.

As a participant, you will:

• discover what is blocking you and release it
• dramatically improve the level of your craft
• clarify your purpose
• get your message to your audience through social media, blog, etc
• begin to build your platform
• learn about publishing options
• harness Focused Attraction to magnetically attract all you need

And what do Plug In participants receive?  Again, here's only a partial list.

• eleven 90-minute live teleclasses including 5 with guest experts
• two private sessions with Janet
• gifts from all guest experts

As Janet says at Writing Down Your Soul:  This twenty-week, eleven class teleseries is unique. It is the first in-depth exploration of The Intersection. And it is designed specifically for creatives--writers, speakers, artists.... It merges new and very powerful spiritual practices with your craft, infusing your work with access to limitless creativity and guidance. The result? You create a unique message that cannot help but find its expression in the world. All you have to do is Plug In to the incredible power of The Intersection.

Last Monday, in a post called Journal Treasures/Standing in the Doorway, I shared a journal entry that I'd written on January 3, 2000 (just before starting my first novel), about standing in the doorway and looking in on a gathering of writers.

I wrote about how their minds didn't seem connected to their bodies, how they appeared unaware of their surroundings, and how time seemed to stand still. I longed to step into that room and join them, but instead I turned away to do what was required of me at that time in my life.

Well, on the evening of February 8, during my first Plug In experience with 26 other participants, representing a variety of creative expressions, I felt as if I'd finally crossed the threshold and entered that room. 

Janet talked about how she discovered The Intersection and what happened as a result.  She talked about the power of intention, and she introduced special guest, Gail McMeekin, author of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, who, in turn, shared one of her Gateway Secrets.

The 27 Plug In participants are as yet disembodied voices, but I expect by the end of this series, we'll know each other well.  In the mean time, I can think of no better way to spend 90 minutes on alternate Tuesday evenings than learning, sharing, opening up, and plugging in.

As you know, the name of this blog is Enter the Between, A Writer's Journey, and it's purpose is to share a journey, often full of angst with the occasional sprinkling of joy and victory. 

In contrast, Janet's Intersection is full of light, inspiration, and hope, peopled with allies and mentors.  It's about positive thinking and aligning with success.

A nice change, wouldn't you say?

And just so you know that I'm taking this course seriously, I'll share my first "Play Book" assignment.

My Intention Mandala.

To learn more about the Intention Mandala, go to: The Lotus and the Lily: Intention Mandala, or to Jumpstart 2010 With A Conditions Mandala.

Oh, and guess what I'll be posting about every other week until the end of June?

You got it.

So stay tuned.