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Your Voice Matters…

How many times in your life have you felt unseen, unheard and undervalued.

OMG, it hurts doesn’t it!!

As children, it is a common experience – sometimes too common – to feel this way, and each time it happens it erodes our self-confidence further and further, and some of us begin to believe we’re not worth listening to.

As adults, we then carry an empty, black hole around inside us. We seek validation from the wrong people and that emptiness inside remains unfulfilled.

In fact, each time we try to speak up and are not listened to, or we feel we are not being valued, the wound gets worse.

For many, by the time they’ve reach adulthood, they’ve given up on trying to be heard and that is soooooo sad.

If this rings true for you I want you to hear this:

As long as you are alive, life’s not done with you yet…there’s so much more to your story.

Let me explain…

What happens when you decide you want to become an author?

What does the author journey look and feel like?

Like any other journey into unknown territory, there is often a lot to learn, and the only way to learn it and achieve our goals is to move toward them, putting one foot in front of the other and asking for help along the way.

Romecca’s path to becoming an author has been nothing short of inspirational. We’ve witnessed her reliving her story, facing challenges with unwavering determination, and emerging as a beacon of hope and creativity for so many others. 

We understand the emotional rollercoaster that authors like Romecca embark upon when they set out to share their own stories, not only in reliving their own experiences but in allowing themselves to become vulnerable to their potential readers.

The first draft is for you…

How is your writing going?

Today, I especially wanted to speak to those of you who are writing non-fiction books. It is really important for you to understand this so take note:

The first draft of your book is for you.

The second and subsequent drafts are for your reader.

Writing a book, especially a memoir, is a very personal and often confronting experience that requires truckloads of patience and self-compassion.

More often than not, a first draft is more like a dump than a book, and that is perfectly fine.

If you want to sell books, however, and especially if you want to help other people with your experience and expertise, the second and subsequent drafts have to be for your reader.

No one wants to hear what you have to say :(

Have you ever felt like this?

If I had a dollar for every woman my age who had been told that children should be seen and not heard, I would be the richest woman on the planet.

Or for those who were told that they were greedy if they asked for what they wanted, and that what they wanted didn’t matter because there were more important needs to be taken care of and those needs just about always belonged to someone else who was more important than us.

And we didn’t hear these things once or twice throughout our childhood. We heard them over and over and over with great passion, so it was literally drummed into us that speaking up made no difference.

Worse than that, speaking up sometimes made us a target for anger, and possibly even violence.

So, it should be no surprise to know that one of the greatest needs of many of my counselling clients was, first and foremost, to be heard.

The validation that comes from feeling heard is a powerful experience, and people will pay for that experience because being heard is such a deeply held basic need for human beings.

It’s also the beginning of the healing process for many of the deepest wounds.

So why do we need to heal and what has this got to do with writing books?

How long have you been thinking about writing a self-help book?

Writing a self-help book was something I had wanted to do for many, many years but I didn’t know what I wanted to write about or how to go about writing it?

I was on a perpetual personal development journey, and I’d journaled daily most of my life – pages and pages every day – but there was never one particular theme or area that I wrote about that I thought I could develop into a book. At least I couldn’t see it.

I had so many questions about writing a book. ALL. THE. TIME. Where would I start? How would I know what to write about? How would I get it published? Who would want to read my book?

I agonised over it for so many years before I finally wrote a book and published it and shared it with the world, and I know so many more people who live with the same angst that I lived with of wanting to write that book.

If you are feeling this, then read on because this week’s blog is for you…

Getting started on your book: What’s stopping you?

This might sound overly simplistic, but the first step in writing a book is getting started.

Getting started on a book can be a huge hurdle for writers and is possibly the most common reason why a writer never becomes a published author. How sad is that!

So why is it so difficult for some authors to get started? And how can an author overcome the blocks that are keeping them from realising their dream?

Do you have a healthy author mindset?

A healthy author mindset is the set of attitudes and beliefs that I believe writers must adopt to help them succeed in becoming published. It is the mental framework that allows writers to approach their work with the dedication, passion, and the willingness to learn and improve that they are going to need to realise their goals.

A healthy author mindset is crucial for any writer who wants to achieve success and fulfillment in their writing career so in this blog, I wanted to explore what a healthy author mindset looks like and why I think it is important.

What exactly is a healthy author mindset?

Do you have deep emotional wounds?

Have you considered using writing as a tool for healing?

Writing can actually be a powerful tool for transformation. As a counsellor I often encouraged clients to journal regularly as a way to process through their feelings, get to know themselves better and become more aware of what they needed.

For me, writing has always provided a safe space to explore my own feelings and thoughts, and it continues to help me gain insight and clarity about myself and my life.

Whatever is going on in our lives and whatever we are feeling, we can use writing to make sense of things in a way that can be difficult to do using other means.

So, why might someone consider using writing to heal their deeply held emotional wounds? And what is the best way to achieve that?

Do you feel like you are living on purpose?

Is having a clear and meaningful direction in your life that aligns with your values, your passions, and your strengths something that matters to you?

In my work with authors, I have found that living on purpose and following their calling is something that matters a great deal. It certainly matters to me.

Being on purpose means you are living intentionally and with a deep sense of purpose, where every action you take and every decision you make is guided by your personal mission and goals.

Being on purpose requires you to have a deep understanding of yourself, and that you have the ability to use that knowledge to make conscious choices that lead to a fulfilling and purposeful life.

It requires that you are being fully present in each moment, and that you are engaging in activities that are meaningful and aligned with your vision for your life.

Is being disruptive a bad thing?

Most of us grew up being told that being disruptive was a bad thing and we were made to feel shame for being disruptive.

Children are taught that being disruptive is generally not acceptable behaviour, especially in the context of a classroom or other learning environments. Basically, behaving in any way that interrupts the learning process, such as talking out of turn, being loud, or distracting other students is considered bad behaviour.

We then grow up believing that being well-behaved, attentive, and respectful of others is a good thing, and it is.

But sometimes people and things need to be disrupted. Sometimes being quiet and ‘keeping the peace’ is actually more harmful, and being a Disruptive Author can bring about positive change in the lives of anyone we reach with our writing.

What does it mean to be a disruptive author?