Do you negotiate yourself out of time? I’ll write as soon as I finish this … and this … and this. Do you assume the worst? What’s the point of even starting? I’m sure nothing will come of it. I’ll just disappoint myself. Do you bore yourself? This is the same crap I created last time.

I’ve also heard I can’t get organized and I don’t know what to write and Who’s going to want to read this? One of my own personal favourites is No matter how much I create or how good it is, it will never make enough of a difference.

The fear of scarcity goes back a long way – far enough back to trigger survival issues and to activate the part of the brain that’s tough to reason with because it’s so primitive, immature, and unenlightened.

Scarcity’s poster boy is Zog the Caveman. Zog doesn’t care about your brilliant impulse, the one that prompted you to turn on the computer or pick up the paintbrush. He scoffs at concepts like beauty and sharing. Zog’s only concern is safety. Your ember of loveliness, that thought that keeps asking to be created in the real world, constitutes a threat to the dark, private safety of the cramped cave where the Zog part of you resides.

It’s pitiful, really. And yet Zog is here to stay. So what are you going to do with him? He’s not as wily as Ego. He’s not going to trick or manipulate you into doing things his way. He’s only going to roll a big boulder of fear onto your path and squat in front of it glaring at you, daring you to run around it. If you try, he’ll tackle you and drag you by the hair back to where you started.

Surely there’s a way to outsmart this Neolithic brute. But no. You can’t outsmart Zog because he’s not smart enough to be outsmarted. You’ve got to thwart him at his own level, in a prepubescent staring contest.

Scarcity must be seen to be disbelieved.

Scarcity’s power comes from our unwillingness to look at it directly. Avoidance makes it bigger than it really is. So find a way to look.

“When you face your discomfort,
you open the door to personal transformation.
You create an opportunity to put scarcity in perspective.”
Maria Nemeth, The Energy of Money

Use your creativity to put yourself face to face with what’s hiding beneath scarcity’s fear. Write about and through your particular fears of scarcity. Get the specifics out into the open where you can see them. The view will shift. For example, my fear shifted to Making a difference in even one person’s life is reason enough to keep writing what I want to write.

If you step into the shadow of the path-blocking boulder and confront Zog head-on with a devil-may-care stare … you will win. Your fear of scarcity will dwindle to the size and threat level of a tiny plastic caveman toy standing in front of a cleverly painted Styrofoam pebble.

When it comes right down to it, Zog is a whiny wuss who can’t withstand a direct hit. So stop trying to be mature. Pick a fight. Go in kicking. Get your knuckles dirty so you can find out what’s on the other side of the fear.

You’ll find yourself shining in the sun.

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Related reading:

• versions
• dirty tricks for writers

When I was two, I wouldn’t go anywhere if my socks were wrinkled up inside my shoes, so Mom took my shoes on and off, trying to smooth those wrinkles. When I was four, Mom ironed a dress for me to wear to preschool, but I refused to wear it and she couldn’t figure out why. So while I was at school she washed and ironed all my dresses, and from then on I chose for myself what to wear. In high school, I’d get so upset when Mom came to wake me up that she bought me an alarm clock and let me work out my waking up issues for myself.

Mom knew I was different. I was born with … [click here to read the full article on the life by me website]

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“birthing a book with grace”

listen to the recording of this call for free

On Monday, the “Birthing a Book with Grace” call with book authors and clients Sarah Seidelmann and Katie McClain turned up great stories and excellent questions about writing with the writer’s shepherd. You’re welcome to listen to the recording to learn more about bringing a book to life and ways of supporting yourself around writing.

Click here to download the MP3 recording of the call.

Choices might be simpler to make if not for foolish dreams. Even when Ego tries to banish them, even when more sensible choices already fill the table, my foolish dreams tap at my shoulder, pulling my gaze upward. My head lifts, my eyes shift to clouds and the sky beyond, my face relaxes. I become mesmerized by a bird, way up there, way out there, an enticing flicker in the far distance.

“You sure look stupid,” says Ego, “standing there baying at the moon.” With a smirk, Ego gives me a rude push to jolt me back to Earth and I have to look down, away from the horizon, to keep from falling to my knees in the dirt.

If I do as Ego says and ignore my foolish dreams, keep my focus only on the options right in front of me, life becomes a progressive slump into grey flatness. I go nowhere because I’m cut off from my source of fuel.

My imaginary benevolent dictator knows this. When I’m suffering from option fatigue, wearing myself out jumping back and forth between pros and cons, with no choice in sight that sings, and Ego is nattering on in the background about all the ways it’s possible to screw up a decision, at some point, before I implode, the benevolent dictator summons the Joker.

“Hey!” shouts the Joker. “You’re going nowhere fast. How about you take a break and I’ll tell you a joke.” He shoos the crowd back to make room, stands in the middle of the cleared circle of empty floor, gathers all the attention, and says …

“Geez, I’m soaked! It’s pouring outside.” He shakes his head like a dog and you can almost see the imaginary drops flying off. He takes one step to the left and becomes the person he’s having this conversation with, who says …

“I know! I just stepped in a poodle.”

Silence. Ego is stunned into immobility for a blessed moment. The benevolent dictator’s mouth twitches into a smile. My pros and cons vaporize in a breath of fresh air as the ceiling blows away to reveal a whole flock of foolish dreams in a sky that’s not, in fact, rainy and grey at all.

The Joker, taking advantage of Ego’s frozen silence, races over and pulls down Ego’s pants. I laugh, and my foolish dreams sharpen into focus.

The serious business of making The Right Decision got in the way of feeling joy. My body knows what’s important, what joy is, though my head may not. It’s not that I had too many options, only too few that resembled me. Looking away (where else am I going to look when Ego’s pants come down?) brought my whole self into perspective, foolish dreams and all. When I looked back at that table full of options, it was easy to choose.

Irreverence, changes in perspective, diverted attention, flights of fancy, joking, putting Ego in its place as a servant of benevolence, writing to let foolishness have its way, and taking a long exhaling look at the sky have a way of turning options into certainties … and articles into fables.

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Related reading:

• what if writing was a spectator sport?
• 20 ways to make a decision

Sarah, what’s a story about someone who encouraged or taught you to write (or create) in your own way?

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was a gaggle of free-spirited nuns at a summer day camp I went to called The Barn when I was 11. Those kind, low-key, spiritually minded women simply invited us to make poetry – however we could. It was delightful. There was no judgment and there was little evaluation (that I recall, anyway). We wrote poetry that we embellished with art. We did lots of haiku. Except for the discipline of the haiku format, we were just creating without rules.

Mostly, we wrote in the shade of a grove of old trees, or, sometimes, when the weather was inclement, in an old convent. The nuns typed up our finished pieces for us. In that way, they gave me my first taste of being “published.” It was so thrilling to see my words typed up along with the art I drew to accompany them. (I still have some!) It looked so official. I was bursting.

I learned to write just for the joy of writing – not to please others, but to please myself. The nuns taught me to do that in a very sneaky way, by mostly saying very little and giving us the time and space to work.

That experience taught me to remember that, primarily, I write for me. This helps me relax. If I’m enjoying the process, that’s all that matters. I forget about the reader, at first. This is very helpful for creating first drafts. It’s sweet icing on the book-cake when my writing touches someone else, too. 

More about Sarah

Sarah Bamford Seidelmann is a fourth-generation physician turned shamanic healer and life coach. Her most recent book is Born to FREAK: A Salty Primer for Irrepressible Humans. Her first book, What the Walrus Knows, is getting rave reviews on Amazon, as is the What the Walrus Knows app, available at iTunes. Sarah lives with her husband and four children near the shores of Lake Superior.

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Birthing a Book with The Writer’s Shepherd 

On a free call on Monday, book authors Sarah Seidelmann and Katie McClain will share about the process of taking a book from dream to actual completion, and how my shepherding helped. Tips and Q and A included.  

April 29th at 10 AM Central Time
Call 1-605-475-4000; participant access code: 892342#

Photo from Sarah Seidelmann.

Related reading:
mini pep talk 1, mini pep talk 2,
writing through the shoulds

What’s your answer if I ask you, “What do you look like?” You could answer directly, with factual descriptions of your features, as if I’d asked, “How do you look?” but would that really give me the most accurate sense of how you look?

As soon as like enters the scene, comparison and metaphor shove in for a shot at giving me more of a sense of the real you. Poets know this and fill their lines with comparisons, making us swoon with instant understanding.

I look like my mother and my grandmother, to a degree that causes alarm at family reunions, where people who knew my grandmother gaze at me with fascinated, gooey affection (my grandmother was spectacularly, wonderfully kind), and my aunts keep accidently calling me Nancy, my mom’s name, because I’m the spitting image of their sister. They get a triple love whammy when they look at me because they see all three of us at once. It’s pretty fun for me. This is a photo of my grandmother. It might as well also be a photo of me and my mother (well, except for the hairstyle).

But if I want you to know more of the whole story of me, if I want to help you know who I am by telling you or showing you an expanded range of what I look like, I’ll need to show you other images, too.

For example, I also look like this autumn tree, because, like me, it’s alive and growing and has a personality and speaks and shines and transforms itself and loves being outdoors and uses sunlight for fuel and feels good standing alone while also being part of a scene and rooted in the ground. This particular tree is also the spitting image of me.

I could make all sorts of albums of images and art and word descriptions of what I’m like and each one would give you another hint of another facet. You could do the same thing, of course. In fact, you do, every time you create something. That blog post you wrote is like you, so is that photograph you took, and that casserole you baked, and that child you made, and so is everything you feel an affinity with.

Writing and creating don’t have to be logical to make sense. Point yourself. Like something. It will like you back. You will be like each other. Then everything you create will include it. The reflections will be brilliant.

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If you like my blog posts and want to know more about how I do it and (more importantly) how you can create blog posts that bring your own shine forward, now is a good time to get the Conscious Blogging e-course.

Tomorrow is the last day of the $49 early-bird special. As of Thursday, the course will be $129.

Conscious Blogging is a self-paced course – although it’s delivered over six weeks, you can save the emails and do it whenever you want. Click here for details.

Book authors Sarah Seidelmann and Katie McClain will share about the process of taking a book from dream to actual completion and how Grace helped. Grace will share some tips and ideas, and we’ll have an opportunity for Q and A.

Monday, April 29, at 10 a.m. Central Time
Call 1-605-475-4000; participant access code: 892342#

a note about all the lowercase letters

It’s not strictly proper for a website about writing to use wonky capitalization. I’m not trying to be irritating on purpose!

I use lower case letters to challenge “correctness” on a site with a message of encouraging people to create as themselves, even when that means colouring outside the lines of what’s normal and expected. I also use lowercase letters (and rounded corners on images) to present the site’s content as coming from a soft persona (a gentle shepherd), because I often work with and advise people who are in recovery from being judged.

It’s a design decision vs. ignorance or error. If the lowercase letters irritate you, maybe this explanation will soften the blow.

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Related reading: if you can think, you can write and mini pep talk 1

Your ancestors lived long enough to create you.
You come from a long line of people who had sex.
You’re still breathing.
You love someone or something.
Language allows us to communicate.
Someone is wiser than you.
Questions solicit answers.
You sense your surroundings.
Your thoughts are private.
You can share your thoughts.
You learned how to read.
Paper was conceived of and created.
The Internet was conceived of and created.
You have created something.
You can create something again.
You get to decide what you create.
Days occur one after the other.
Clocks are optional.
Nourishment is necessary.
Office supplies inspire.
Blossoms open. Leaves fade and fall.
You exist in a context.
You are connected.
You have a wish.
In this moment, you have choices.
In this moment, too.
And this one.

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Related reading:
wonder – write better by exploring your fascination

Do you like this sort of thing?

Should I do more?

Please let me know in the comments. I value your feedback.

Related reading: mini pep talk 2