This year I attempted Nanowrimo for the first time (which is challenge where you write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November).? In fact, this was my first attempt at any kind of fiction writing.

I don’t have any logical explanation for why I decided to do this.? I have learned that it’s best to follow these kinds of inner callings, so when I got the call I followed it.

With no clue or experience in fiction writing, I didn’t go into this with the hopes that I would end up with a brilliant novel.

I went into this thinking there would be something for me in the process of showing up every day to do something that I don’t actually know how to do.

And there was.

The first 5 days or so I played with it.? I showed up every day and took my characters on the kinds of adventures I thought I wanted to take them on and it started to feel more and more meaningless and stupid.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I was embarrassed about what I was writing.? My inner critics came out to play and it started to get really hard.

And then I had a heartbreakingly bad day. This was unrelated to Nanowrimo but I decided to use my writing time to work through it.? So I used the story to explore what was happening me, like the way that I write my Tiny Fairy Tales, only not in a tiny way.

From that day on, I used my daily writing practice to write myself deeper into my inner process.

Working with whatever I was facing on that day, I turned my own transformative work into an ongoing story.? By looping the tiny stories together and writing out the bigger, ongoing story I found I started telling a deeper story.

The stories led me to a new depth of how I want to express my work, which led me to what I REALLY want to write: a guidebook on the mechanics of inner and outer transformation.

You may have noticed I changed the header on my website recently.? These stories led me there, to: Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance which is the name of this guidebook I’m working on now.

More in-depth and thorough than anything I have ever seen out there about how inner and outer transformation actually works, I want this guidebook to be the basis of what we do next year in the Creative Dream Circle which will be less about teaching classes and more about creating space for you to go deeper into your own depths.

Plus, I’ll use a lot of the stories from my Nanowrimo novel to illustrate how the process of transformation works, so it feels like a lot of the guidebook is already written.

And beyond that, establishing a practice of meeting myself, and then staying there for at least 1,667 words, was so helpful I’m going to keep doing it.

In my classes I’m often asking people to spend more time with a question than they think they need to.? This is a super helpful practice, because just sitting with it works to melt (some of) our resistance.? And being engaged in a regular practice helps hold space to go deeper into ourselves.

Right now, I’m sitting at 44,369 words written this month for my novel, and 4,718 words written for the Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance guidebook.? And I’m happy to keep going.