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NEW EVENT LISTING!
July 21-22, 2012
Women, Writing and Soul-Making
North Carolina Arboretum
Asheville, North Carolina

NEW EVENT LISTING!
August 3-5, 2012
Zen Mind, Writer's Mind
Alexander, North Carolina

 Sept 30 - Oct 7, 2012  

The 10th Annual
Fearless Writing on the Blue Ridge Retreat
Early Bird Deadline Extended to July 20, 2012!
Canton, NC (Lake Logan)



November 10 & 11, 2012
Follow the Pen: A Two-Day Journey to Fearless Writing
Montreat, North Carolina

 
Visit the website
for more details and
all things ClarityWorks

I had long understood that
surrender has nothing
do do with "giving up";
however, only upon
my return from Medjugorje
did I learn that surrender really
means totally loving
myself, with all my
human frailties and
shortcomings.

In Medjugorje, I
experienced the love
of God;
now I find that surrender
involves accepting this
love for myself.




Peggy Tabor Millin
 Mary's Way: Cultivating a Peaceful Heart inTrying Times

Practice Makes Possible

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Process before product.

Writing requires silence, solitude, space, and the courage and awareness to search our shadow side.

Write from the belly, not the brain; write from the heart, not the head.

The body with its intuition and our willingness to listen to what the body says are our greatest assets as writers.

Writing and publishing are not the same thing. If we write, we are writers. If we publish what we write, we are published writers. A published writer is not a better writer. A published writer is simply a writer who is published.


-Peggy Tabor Millin
excerpts from

Women, Writing, and Soul-Making

Wordly Wise from Peggy Tabor Millin
 
Writing a Novel,
Writing a Life

I am writing my first novel. I would like to report that this is a swift and joyous undertaking, but cannot say that with integrity.

Nonfiction, I have decided, is easier for me. I know that terrain. It's a journey with a beginning and an end. The major decisions lie in narrowing my focus. Easier doesn't mean I haven't endured Storm und Drang while writing nonfiction, but I seem to be able to keep a rainbow within view.

Fiction, on the other hand, appears like an endless string of yard that I'm winding into a ball.  The further I go the bigger the ball, but the less I can see of what's already been wound. I experience so much Storm und Drang I began to doubt rainbows exist.

I was metaphorically at sea in a very frail boat until my mentor gave me an oar. He suggested I sort my writes according to where the scenes take place. For my particular novel and style of writing, which relies heavily on sense of place, this is proving to be a good approach. Right now I am focusing on the scenes that take place in the main character's house. As a result of this focus, the characters are coming alive and presenting me with a new and deeper understanding of this work.

Also of course there are new challenges. I'm aware that I must develop a more carefully constructed timeline. In my book, the lives of my characters are influenced by national and international social and political events, such as the American Indian Movement and the Vietnam War. I have to keep track of how all these things intersect in time. I've heard that Eudora Welty plotted her novels by pinning notes about the scenes to a quilt hung on her wall. I plan to tape up a long piece of what I grew up calling "butcher paper" and use Post-It Notes. I become frustrated with how much time spent on the book is spent not writing.

And I haven't even mentioned yet my own timeline. I am reminded that "how we do anything is how we do everything" and that my modus operandi is to bite off more than I can chew. I've quit teaching weekly classes to

the new garden beds

free myself up, but also added a new vegetable garden that along with the rest of the yard requires my attention.  I'm developing more online outlets for my work, but that presents a new learning curve and waves goodbye to the dream of living lento tempo life! My home and office desperately want to be cleared of the old and unused and that requires decisions about disposing of the unwanted.

I am practicing living under the lamp of wisdom as defined by Jungian Helen Luke:
When I remember to remember those words, to bask in their truth even for a moment, my body relaxes, expectations float away, and I simply move on to the next thing I have to do.

The book will be written, the plants watered and weeded,

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the house sorted. The business will take its next step.Each thing in its own time and I can rest in the unfolding of it all. I think it's called freedom, or perhaps it's called love.

Keep Writing!