Have you ever had the surreal experience of realizing you’re inside someone else’s breakthrough moment? When you’re seeing the lightbulb go off, or someone come to terms with their past, all right in front of your eyes? As though Oprah herself had suddenly come into the room and given everyone free stuff.
Well, I had an experience like that recently. I was at a writer’s workshop. One of the writers there was a super-confident young man with a family and with a good job. He was always the first with his comments and seemed to be really in control of who he was and what he wanted to get from the workshop.
Then, something incredible happened. Because the workshop forced him to dig deep and think about his own journey as a hero in a fairy tale, he remembered something. An event that had changed his life when he was only a teenager. An event that had probably determined his direction in life.
And he had completed forgotten about it until that moment!
What ensued was perhaps understandable. There were tears and a lot of comforting from his wife and fellow workshop members. And he found a new purpose for his writing, and a new story for himself that left him energized and excited for his creative future.
But I was flabbergasted, because… how could you forget such a moment in your life?
The truth is… life gets in the way. We’re busier than we ever have been. We live our lives often for others–wives, husbands, parents, children. We forget about our own needs and our own stories. But those stories don’t disappear. They stay inside us, and sometimes, we forget them.
I want to help you get those stories out and on paper. Maybe you’ve felt an internal nagging that you should probably tell that story that’s been bothering you, but you just haven’t had time to write down. Or maybe you’ve sat down with a white piece of paper (or flashing cursor in Word) and not found the right way to begin…
Maybe what you’re missing is something as simple as a handbook, with concrete exercises to get your imagination flowing. A few decades ago, Ursula K LeGuin wrote a wonderful little book called Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. It’s a great guide on how to get over the hump and equip yourself with the tools necessary to write your story well.
I’m going to do two guided workshop based on this wonderful book to help get your creativity flowing. And they’re absolutely free!
The first workshop will be on March 27 at 8 pm EST, the second, a week later, on April 3, also at 8 pm EST.
Whoever comes will be automatically entered to win a free 30 minute one-on-one session with me to discuss your latest writing project (or whatever else you like).
If this is something that you find interesting, be sure to share the image above and tell your friends to come as well!
Sign up here to be automatically included in the drawing and to get a reminder about the workshop before it goes live.