THE SOULFIRE WAY: YOUR PATH TO AN AUTHENTIC, RAPTUROUS CREATIVE LIFE
Why this book, why now?
Five words: Disruption. Renaissance. Divergence. Relevance. Yearning.
In December 2013, I started writing a new book for writers, artists, filmmakers, poets, dancers, theatricals, melody-makers and other creatives who want to bring their work out of the margins and into the core of their lives. It builds on my platform with The Writing Space (thewritingspace.net), weekly podcasts on the writing life and my sessions with creatives to bring their work to fruition.
It’s part The Artist’s Way, part Wishes Fulfilled.
THIS WEEK: Why Disruption is Your Friend
Why What You Think is Real is Not Real,
and Why What You Think is Not Real is Real
Our worlds have been disrupted. Some of this we know, some of this we haven’t quite copped to.
We know very underpinnings of our economic and world order are in flux, yet while we feel the pain, it is abstract and distant. What we do know is we see others’ lives disrupted or even our own. What we do know, whether it’s us or them, is that we’re dissatisfied.
Still, we yearn. That, we know.
Many people have been swept out of their professions. Many of my journalist colleagues have. Or they have seen their segment of the economy wiped out, vanished beneath their feet. Many of my tech friends are reinventing themselves faster than you can say résumé. Maybe they are still hanging on, but they walk in every day knowing they are underutilized and undervalued.
The real picture is a failure to thrive because it’s time to change. It’s not time to hope and wait for better. And it’s not doom and gloom that won’t get better.
You’re supposed to make it better.
The real moment is an invitation. An opportunity to find your true place.
Creatives already know well the sense of being misplaced. But they haven’t always felt it as pointedly as so many creatives feel it now.
Many of us have come to the awareness that there is no longevity or security in signing up to do the same thing in the same field for 30 years.
We know, because we always do know, that we must reinvent ourselves. We need to find a new nest. To make a new nest.
Yet, isn’t this is what the creative has been yearning for all along, the moment to be anointed as who she or he truly is, the moment to come alive and be fully self-expressed? To be free to be who you are? To turn your attention to your craft and come fully awake?
Or, just to see where this will go.
The white rabbit has beckoned you for years now. Come, follow me. You’re late for a very important date. Go ahead, fall through the hole by the roots of that tree. Feel what it’s like to spin down through a well while you wonder, as Alice did, “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.”
It’s time to find out what happens next.
Find yourself in a curious hall with many locked doors. Drink me. Eat me. Cry a pool of tears. Don’t worry. You’ll swim your way out.