Holding the Questions

Questions & Sweet Inspiration

A new character emerged in a journey I was taking this week. At the beginning of our Way of the Heart ™ Feng Shui I follow up class my teacher takes up on a magical journey inward. My intention for the class is the same as my intention for the blog.

To write the stories that will come together to create a book.

To allow those stories to be written from my imagination, from a place where the book has 

already been written, and by the characters within the stories themselves.

On this journey I was taken to one of the worlds in my book. A world who’s hero’s are struggling with what they are able and willing to do as well as not knowing what they can do. The scene I saw and felt in my mind and heart was so alive and real. I could feel this character’s deep longing for the leader of this world to step into his power, follow his heart and do what he knows to do. It was visceral for me. When I emerged I knew I had a new character and his personality and attributes started to fall into place. He is ancient and is part of the balance of this world. He has known this world since the beginning of time also known the leader since his birth.

There is something unique about this character, he sees into the depths of one’s skills and abilities and sees the outcomes of choices. The leader he watches stands at a crossroads. One choice moving him closer to what his heart knows will save this world, yet does not know how this will happen. The other choice motivated by fear, overwhelm and grief will result in a very different outcome.

The questions that came up for this writer are:

How do I convey in story the inward journey each character is taking?

The struggle from each character’s point of view?

Do I do it in small bits, allowing the inner anguish to be revealed in its own time?

I remember we never really knew the depth of the anguish Severus Snapes felt in Harry Potter until the very end of the last book.

I carried these questions around this week and was surprised and delighted when my Way of the Heart™ Feng Shui I manual offered me a piece of wisdom that added a new dimension to the world I am creating.

You who have the knowledge, what are you doing with it?

My focus had been on the leader and looking at the leader’s choices from the eyes of the ancient creature emerging from the dark underground.

You who have the knowledge, what are you doing with it?

Questions: What knowledge does he have?
What is his responsibility around having this knowledge?
Is it his to do something with?

This new and compelling creature has emerged at this time in my process and the world of my books process – what has he brought to us?

Do we not all have knowledge about something – what are we going to do with it?

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle,

requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Albert Einstein

What a journey I am walking. Reading the book of life through this “Way” and with the my amazing manuals is such a joy and alchemical mystery. Sometimes I end up with more questions than answers. I am truly beginning to understand when I ask questions, sleep on the question, and carry them in my Writer’s Heart; it will not take long before the being of my story & my book will have me bounding into my office for my journal to write some sweet inspiration down.

So….. I end this week’s blog with Gratitude and a question for you.

What questions are you carrying around in your heart?

See you all next week.
Thanks for walking the journey with me.

It is not that I am so smart, But that I stay with the question much longer.

Albert Einstein

 

 

Resonance

When you read different books do you hear different voices? Is the voice you hear in your head different for each book you read?

What kind of voice do I want to have in my book?

Do the words we writers use carry a resonance of what we are wanting them to convey?

Resonance & Momentum & Magnetism – the energy behind, in, through and imbuing our stories.

The Mind is the writer’s landscape.

As a mountain scene might be an artist’s landscape.

A visual artist studies light, perspective, colour and space.

A writer studies memory, imagination, words, thoughts and feelings.

Natalie Goldberg – Wild Mind Living the Writer’s Life

This has been a week of reading other people’s stories to see what others are creating. In all the studies I have done on writing I keep hearing  – read – read – read.
I began to notice each book or story had a different voice. I could feel the energy in the words and the story had a flowing energy that seemed to be taking me somewhere.
I like to spend time with a book, to savour the images and feel what the character by way of the author is offering me. As I became aware of the unique voice of each storyteller and each story I wondered about resonance and the energy in each story.

Is there hope?

What keeps me walking the journey with this book I am reading and each page I turn?

As an author I wish to offer my readers a hope, a heart connection that will come out in my writing – that is my intention.

I took all my ponderings and questions to my Life Mission III™  Way of the Heart manual this week and was offered a piece of wisdom from John Fox a certified poetry therapist.

“It is not words about roses that makes sacred poetry.

Sacred poetry is made when the roseness that lives within a particular

rose speaks to us and we listen and we write.”

I am listening and writing. I listen to the guidance and creative wisdom offered each time I sit down to write. Each character, landscape and moment is speaking its own unique “roseness” to me.

Will you feel that in my writing? Can I be open enough to let you see me?
Is writing about a world different than mine also writing about my world?
How much of each character is actually an aspect of me?

The art of asking questions is a one of the most fascinating journey’s The Way of the Heart™  is helping me take and use more deeply in my life. As I ask these questions about writing and myself I feel excited to read. My reading becomes more of an exploration of the world between the lines of what I am reading. I take my questions to what I am reading and it becomes richer.

This has been a fun blog to write because it leaves me with more questions rising within me.
Thanks so much for journeying with me and allowing me to ponder, ask and hold the highest possibility that the answers will come in the most unique creative way.

I would like to leave you with something from a different author.
Maybe you could ask yourself at the end:

What am I feeling having just read this?
What is my heart saying?

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. 

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. 

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and 

passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

J.R.R.Tolkein

The Return of the King