Feng Shui for Writers Blog Tour

Book Details

• Title: Feng Shui For Writers
• Series: How To Master Your Life
• Author: M.C. Simon
• Genre: Non-Fiction
• Format: Paperback and Kindle
• Length: 152 pages
• Publication Date: June 16, 2015
• Publisher: IML Publishing
• Regular Price: $7.99 Kindle

 

Synopsis

DISCOVER HOW TO MASTER YOUR WRITING LIFE

FENG SHUI FOR WRITERS provides all the dots that you have to connect to control the flowing Chi for each writing category. What is harmony for a romantic novel writer is different from what is harmony for a journalist writer, and for sure very different than for the writer writing for the horror domain. To bring the Feng Shui technique into the writer's life, it is not enough to merely explain general principles and ideas; we have to dig deeper because the branches of writing are so numerous.

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Find Out HOW TO:

• Attract productivity, successful publishing and money using Feng Shui
• Overcome writer's block with Feng Shui help
• Organize your writing place to achieve your goals
• Influence your writing life through colors
• Use crystals for creative writing
• Use lighting to Feng Shui your writing space
• Choose the plants that will boost your creativity
• Influence your "writer's zone" and the creative mind
• Boost your children's creativity (yes… children are young writers also)

And much more.

 

Buy Links

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Amazon IN  

Excerpt

6.2 - THE WRITER'S ZONE

To understand what a writer's zone is, you must first experience the previous state called a writer's block. Then and only then will you understand how you can face it and how you can move to the writer's zone. This zone is exactly the opposite of a writer's block; it is the optimal phase in which a writer can find himself. It is the phase in which Chi flows freely on the writer's path, the creativity is boosted and the writing productivity reaches maximum level.

Having knowledge about both states, a writer's block and a writer's zone, you can save the wasted time between these two phases.

There are some elements that influence your entering into this zone.

• One of these is your location. Depending on where you live, you must find a writing environment that boosts your writing mood. Find a place suitable for you that you feel relaxed in and totally prepared to let the words flow.
• Take a walk in the park or the woods, go for a drive on a long unpopulated road. Don't forget to take the camera with you and take pictures that will help you relax the next time you need to enter into the writer's zone without having to walk again. A walk in a quiet and relaxing place is a good Feng Shui method to un-clutter your mind of stress.
• Do some brainstorming for your future book; try to prepare a good plot for your novel. Do some research on the theme that you want to write about.
• Avoid emails, other online temptations, phones and any other distractions that are blocking the Chi flow of your creativity and productivity.
• Listen to some music and prepare a playlist with your favorite relaxing songs. Use this list until it becomes a habit that is helping you enter into the writer's zone.
• Breathe! Yes, breathe. Fill your lungs with fresh air until they expand to the point where they touch, take a small pause then exhale slowly. Learn to breathe again, so the good Chi also enters your body.
• Burn some incense and use aromatic lamps for fragrance.
• Find a writing retreat in your area. Make it a part of your writing process. This will always get you into the zone. There are two kinds of retreats: solo retreats (suitable for writers who prefer solitude far away from any distractions including other writers) and group retreats (provides a chance for face to face group brainstorming). The best writing retreats are those that include both solo and group retreats. When you go to a writing retreat, be sure that you are applying the Feng Shui principles in that place also (you can even take a Bagua map with you).
• If your mind feels unclear in ideas, use a yellow vase where you place orange flowers. This will boost the intensity of your writing and will give you the necessary clarity.
• Don't forget to always include the water element in your space.
• Avoid too many electronic devices in the moments when you write because they will drain your energy, and soon you'll have to face another writer's block.
• Hang a wooden chime near you so its movement will activate any stagnant Chi.

 

Previously Published Excerpts

Who Is A Writer?

3 Things You Should Do Before Using Feng Shui  

About the Author

Writer, translator, engineer, researcher, project manager, blogger, eternal student... these are only a few words to describe MC Simon.

She strongly believes that energy is ours to use freely, and we need only to open our hearts to regain the lost perception of our true powers. She thinks that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. For this reason, M.C. Simon has never hunted the information but rather waited for the right moment when she would be ready for the information to find her. In the same way, she knows that when someone needs her, the Universe will proceed in such a way that the meeting will take place.

 

Contact The Author

Amazon Author Page

MCSimonWrites.com

FengShuiForWriters.com

Facebook Fan Page

Twitter

GooglePlus

LinkedIn  

Giveaway

Giving away a copy of "Feng Shui For Writers" E-book to 10 lucky winners. :)

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Triggers that shoot ideas: Unleashing the creative impulse

Creative writing techniques, part V

Photo: Hash Milhan / Creative Commons

Very often, writing comes from intuition, the burning desire to write even though you don't know what to say yet. The explosion that originates creativity is a mystery, an impulse that takes place outside the language at that moment when poems and tales are born. It also unleashes a powerful force: the creative impulse.


Before we write and even while writing, we explore memory and reality until we find what we want to say and how to say it. We are moved by an unnamed desire, the pure impulse that compels us. Behind every creative impulse there is a stimulus that acts as a trigger and, before it, there is a whole world to discover and to reveal to others.

The origin of the creative impulse is a mystery, both for a poet and a painter. Ideas can reach everywhere, unexpectedly, and the stimuli that lead us to them aren't always recognizable. However, it's necessary to notice that the stimulus that makes us write is less mysterious and more evident; it often happens when reality hits hard or when we go through a painful event, for example.

Maybe you are now wondering: What happens when life doesn't hit us hard? What if life doesn't give you any reason to look for relief and comfort in writing? Then, some people don't write; they don't need it. But some others mysteriously feel that creative impulse anyway. Where do they find the strength? What is the force that makes them get up in the middle of the night to write? They are receptive people who respond to incentives. They consider that looking for the impulse and paying attention to it to discover its secrets are parts of their job

To understand the impulse as part of the job is essential. Before turning to a blank page, everything is possible if we look out of the window, if we listen to the world outside and we look for things in it. The key is to listen to the impulse, to watch everything that makes it move.

We don't know the origins of the spark, but we know that its light is responsible for making us write hurriedly on a café serviette what the girl at the next table just said:  "I'm sick and tired of living in a pan!" It's responsible for making us stay awake in the middle of the night, scribbling a poem on the notebook we keep next to our bed. It's responsible for making us take a picture with our mobile phone of that young man who is sitting on a bench, whose hand has lost two fingers, and whom we decide to name Jeremiah. It's responsible for making us want to write a horror story after we have finished reading about another topic.

Tales, novels, and poems are born from a first impulse that, instead of disappearing like others, know how to root in our sensitivity until they possess our will and look for shape and sense.

Not everything we scribble on a serviette will become a successful story. It can be either hours or weeks until we see good words appear on the page. We can leave ideas in stand-by for months or years as drafts stacked and forgotten in a drawer.

That's the creative technique that I'm bringing to you today: the creation of a file of first impulses.

Starting today, you will write down every spark, everything that catches your attention. You are looking for an address on Google Maps and you notice the plan of the streets that run parallel, so close yet condemned to never meet. Write it down! Pay attention to sensorial incentives: sight, taste, touch, smell, hearing... A musician can see music in the sound of frying bacon, in the sound of an old typewriter. Those are sounds that trigger ideas.

Look! What do you see? Look at the shadow of your friend on the restaurant's wall while you talk. So similar to Peter Pan's naughty shadow. And go on like that! Never stop!

Copyright © 2013 Cinta García de la Rosa

This post originally appeared on Cinta's Corner.

Cinta García is a Spanish writer, blogger, reviewer, proofreader, editor, and translator who loves the written word. Her biggest dream was to become a published writer, since one of her passions is writing short stories. And she got that dream when she published The Funny Adventures of Little Nani, her debut collection of stories for children and kids at heart.  She recently published a short story for an adult audience, A Foreigner in London, on Smashwords. Enjoy her ramblings in her blog, Cinta's Corner, and her book reviews at I Can't Stop Reading.

Follow Cinta on Twitter: @CintaGarciaRosa

A Shiver of Recognition

Isn’t that what all creative writers want … to have crafted a passage so powerful and compelling that the reader physically trembles at the emotional memory or the sudden insight triggered by the words on the page. 

The first time I heard that phrase was last week in a workshop run by one of my fellow trekkers in Nepal. A full-time teacher of creative writing, Yasmina has taken on the daunting task of getting each member of the trekking group to share his or her experience in written form. Many in the group have little experience with creative writing and struggle with how to even start to record their thoughts and feelings.

Yasmina walked us through a series of exercises that were thought-provoking even for an experienced writer. But when she threw out that phrase— “a shiver of recognition”—as the goal of our scribbling, it seemed a moment of synchronicity. 

I was meant to be there.

I was meant to be there because my “job” for the foreseeable future is to complete the final draft of my novel, A FITTING PLACE.  I’ve had great encouragement from beta readers, who connect with my characters and love the plot. But as Yasmina’s phrase echoed in my brain, I knew what is still missing from my story.  My two primary characters are interesting because they are more than a bit out of the ordinary. But if I cannot write their out-of-the-ordinary story in a way that causes my readers to have that shiver of recognition, I should stop now.

I will not stop.  I will write it so that my readers tremble.  The question is how do I do that.

And what about those of you who are writers?  Do you struggle with that “how”?

Mary Gottschalk

http://marycgottschalk.com

www.Sailingdownthemoonbeam.com

http://twitter.com/marycgottschalk