When I write a new story, or even something like this blog / newsletter post, I love the look of a clean or blank screen in front of me. This blank screen represents Unlimited Possibilities or a new beginning, to me. Nothing is defined. Anything and everything is possible.
It is not until I start typing the first letter of the first word on to the screen, (or for traditional writers, hand-write the first letter on a pad of paper) that the story actually takes shape. Until you start with the first letter nothing is clearly defined, and yet magically, with the first touch of pen to paper, or tentative finger to keyboard, the path or storyline has now been decided! The author (or little ole’ me) has now committed themselves to something. With that simple act of committment a story now unfolds.
That’s not to say the author will stick with the ideas, but with the first words to paper, an idea is now coming to life!
When I wrote, “A Warrior’s Heart: Perseverance” I was in the midst of traumatic memory loss. This meant I was having a hell of a time remembering things! Every writing day was a new day and brand new experience. My memory was so bad, that I had to read the entire story I had previously written days before right from the beginning to where I had just left off before I could continue writing. This made for very slow progress in my writing. But the gift in the process was that each day I started writing from a place of unlimited possibilities or from a place where the slate was clean and I had NO preconceived notion of where the heck the story was going. The story arose from within me.
When you are writing spiritual fiction, allowing and having spirit guide your writing is a pretty cool place to be writing from, in my books!
(Note: If you are interested, I wrote a short article and I provide a definition on what I think the Spiritual Fiction Genre is about on my personal blog here)
The darkside to the gift of continual new beginnings in my writing was keeping the continuity of the characters. 🙂 There were only a couple times I scrunched up my nose and said, “No, this isn’t right” and started again.
What would your life look like if you treated every day as a new day without the baggage or weight of the previous days? Would love to know your thoughts. Contact me at neil@shindao.com or 403-285-5266
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