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The Write Balance Journaling The Writer’s Life Published by Rocky Mountain Creative Publishers Smashwords Edition 6716 W. Sack Dr, Glendale, AZ 85308 www.rockymountaincreativepublishers.com (A division of Rocky Mountain Entertainment) First published in 2012 Copyright 2012 by Debra Quarles. All rights reserved. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-933868-35-6 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. For information 6716 W. Sack Dr., Glendale, AZ 85308 or www.rockymountaincreativepublishers.com The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. May each of you navigate the high peaks of life and see your writing soar. D. Jean Quarles A Note From D. Jean Quarles: In October 2011, I was feeling frustrated, and had been feeling that way for a while. It may have been the fast approaching holidays or the fact I had recently lost my father. While I wanted nothing more than to sit at my desk and type away, the time seemed elusive. There was always something dragging my attention away. I felt wrenched and yanked, pulled and twisted ever farther from my writing. I needed balance. And who better to ask about how to achieve this blissful state than other writers who, I was sure, also had struggled at some point in their career. So I posted ads on the Internet. Writers wanted. Please contact me if you would be interested in writing a blog post on how you balance writing and life. More than 60 amazing writers contacted me, eager to share their lives and secrets to success. I felt immensely blessed by their words and so it wasn’t long before I approached them again and asked if I could put all of their wisdom together into a book for other writers looking for inspiration, tools and understanding. Many of them agreed. These are their words for you. Chapter 1 I Will Go and Live Abroad Anouk Beale I was ten years old when I told my parents: `When I am big, I will go and live abroad!` I already knew that back then! For a while as a child I also wanted my own bookshop. I loved reading. As a teenager I worked in a restaurant.. I thoroughly enjoyed waitressing. I noticed that I earned as much in tips as what I got in wages. I worked for a year abroad in a hotel & restaurant, afterwards I dreamt of opening my own luxury hotel. My landslide started when I was 22, I was diagnosed with MS. At first I only heard all the things I could no longer do. After six months I decide not to let the illness, MS, lead my live. I still dreamt of the hotel but now with extra services like yoga, meditation areas and energy providing meals. I moved abroad to Ireland what I had always wanted to do. The following seven years I lived as if there was no MS. Every two years I had a relapse I lost my vision and the power in my legs. After getting medication everything came back like before. I would happily get on with life like I had had nothing more than flu. The land slided completely when I was 29... It felt like my energy was stored in a colander. A couple of months of sleep helped, but I still didn’t have a lot of energy. I was extremely bored because there was nothing wrong with my brain. I missed work and earning money. I wanted to keep dreaming about a future that was worthwhile. Gradually my interest for books came back. At night time I dreamt a lot and intensely. During the day I thought about work I could do from home. For weeks I had the same dream. I decided to write down my dream in the hope that I would sleep better. That night I slept like a baby. The next day I continued writing the dream and extend the story. I got energy from the writing and coming up with the rest of the story. I slept fantastically at night time. I would wake up with lots of energy which got doubled by the writing. My hotel dream got replaced by my dream of publishing my book. It is not an easy road; Plenty of challenges. But during these searches, dreams and - it might sound strange- my Illness I learned a lot about myself. Amazing all the things a human can do! Now I write when my 22 month old toddler has her nap and in the evening when my husband is working and she is a sleep. ______________________________ When I was no longer able to work due to the diagnosis of two life changing illnesses (ms and a blood disease) I started reading self-help books. These books with their teachings helped me get healthy and out of a wheelchair permanently. In the knowledge base economy we live in today young adults especially can use the teachings to get them the future they want. Often we never get to know about these teachings or only later on in live. These teachings are extremely beneficial to know at a younger age. In Daniel and the hill of kings these teachings are brought in a fun way with the use of a not well known Irish myth and legend. I love writing all genres. Writing is just like telling your story but only you can tell more people and help more people. I have a very big imagination and found that I had a re-occurring dream that kept coming back till the day I wrote it down. Now the dream has become a story about Irish myths and legends and how we can get the most out of life. I have a 2 year old daughter who keeps me on my toes. With nice stories I want to help the reader. I have a children’s story called Buteo Buteo. Daniel and the Hill of Kings the story that came together from my dreams will be for sale by the end of the year 2012. Sickly Perfect my life story and how I dealt with 2 life changing illnesses will be for sale at the beginning of 2013 Chapter 2 The Uber-Mom Pamela Bitterman How one balances a writing career with “real life”, or in my case raising a family, is a question close to my heart. I have written and had published three books and one homily thus far and have two new books in the cooker as we speak (write?). I am extremely fortunate to be able to write full time these days. However when I penned my first book, Sailing To The Far Horizon; The Restless Journey and Tragic Sinking of a Tall Ship, I was chin deep in kids, dogs, husband, household and the daily call of myriad activities attached to being an Uber-Mom. One would think that under those circumstances, getting my mind right to write would have been a challenge. Yet I found the shift from mom/wife to writer/author to be as peaceful and welcoming a transformation as the soft sultry breeze following a chilly rain squall. Please, make no mistake. I have always loved being “mom”, raising our brood, juggling all the various demands of the alpha parent in the home (my wonderful husband has always been the bread-winner). Conversely, however, conforming to the typical “housewife” designation was what initially presented a problem and ultimately resulted in a concession I was would never be able to pull off gracefully. My husband and I embarked upon family life while living aboard our own traditionally rigged and maintained fifty-foot brigantine sailing vessel. Our son was a year old when we purchased her, our daughter born on board a year later. I was a mom, to be sure. But I was a “Boat Mom”, and that distinction carried with it a particular pride and a call to arms – arms, hands, feet and fingernails – that suited me to a tee. The role of sailor was one my husband and I had been forced to relinquish a couple years earlier when we lost our circumnavigating schooner, which was our home and our chosen lifestyle, in a violent storm off the North Cape of New Zealand. We miraculously survived the sinking (read the full account in my first book). But in the wake of our rescue, we found having to squeeze our by then very square-pegged, wander-lusting sea-bum personas into land bound predictable family dictated round holes was a feat akin to finessing the toothpaste back into the tube. I immediately took to the earth-mother role itself with natural organic aplomb. However, performing all the strange tasks and assuming the unfamiliar responsibilities expected of a “suburban (albeit admittedly unlikely suburb) soccer mom” was infinitely more difficult. Consequently, I became able to justify all the mundane foreign parts I was suddenly having to play by reminding myself that I’d be returning each day to my singularly unique home and life afloat; my dock, my boat, my berth, my galley, my ongoing varnish, paint and rigging projects, and all my familiar and oddly soothing shipboard responsibilities. Then a decade or so later, when my husband correctly sensed that our kids would soon outgrow their shared bedroom in our boat’s warm and woody lovingly child decorated and outfitted fore-peak, we bought a house. And with all the wonderful new space, amenities, comforts, and convention that it afforded, I found that rather than reveling in the decadence, I became destitute, lost and foundering. Stripped of my former contented shipboard character born of fifteen years living and working aboard proud salty sailing vessels, I had difficulty recognizing the woman I was being asked to become. So when I settled on the notion that I could use my new-found extra time and unnaturally empty hands to pen the true story of my previous life, love and loss aboard a circumnavigating tall ship, I discovered that I found myself again, someone in whose skin I felt comfortable and confident. And I was “home”. Writing that first book became for me a catharsis, an escape, a near demented obsession. I wrote at the kitchen table while the kids were at school and the dogs were nose-butting my ankles. I wrote longhand with furious pencil on fat yellow legal pad. I wrote for blurred hours at a stretch, blew out my shoulder, filled over a thousand pages with the sea, the storms and the calms, the ports, the people, the brave and adventurous gal that I had once been. I wrote to reclaim her. I succeeded. I found myself rescued once again. But this time the act was not merely for myself, it was so that who and what their father and I had once been would now be forever memorialized for our children as well. My next two books and the adventures that prompted them have taken my life on a life of it’s own. Today I have nothing but time to travel, and to then write about my journeys. Though surprisingly, I find this new freedom to be almost as much of an impediment as an asset. Talk about pressure! I now face not only the blank page but also the blank daily planner, blank calendar, blank future! And all of it is waiting to be filled in, meaningfully, purposefully, solely by moi. It is daunting to exist outside the comfortable confines of an imposed writing (to say nothing of living) schedule. Consequently I have learned a new form of discipline – to continue to take dangerous, exciting leap-of-faith journeys, and to then make myself carve out the hours for committing these ventures to print. It is daunting, yet Child, You Are Miracle, MUZUNGU; A-frican Lost Soul’s Reality Check, and When This Is Over, I Will Go To School, And I will Learn To Read; A Story Of Hope And Friendship For One Young Kenyan Orphan, are the happy results of this new writing regime. And I hope they are just the beginning. __________________________ Pamela Bitterman’s first book, Sailing To the Far Horizon, published by Terrace Books a Trade Imprint of The University of Wisconsin Press, the author’s own story of life, loss, and survival at sea is graphically biographical. It encapsulates the author as product of the first thirty years of her life. It is published in hard cover, and will soon be released in paperback as well as digitally. A translated version titled MOT SODERHAVET has been published in Sweden by NORSTEDTS, NAUTISKA BIBLIOTEKET. Muzungu, the author’s Travel/Adventure/Memoir of her unlikely escapades throughout Kenya picks up on that journey a couple decades later. She has also written an award winning (CBC GOLD MEDAL WINNER and SHARP WRIT BOOK AWARD FIRST PLACE WINNER) children’s book titled When This Is Over, I Will Go To School, And I Will Learn To Read; A Story of Hope and Friendship for One Young Kenyan Orphan. Finally, the author has penned a homily entitled, Child, You Are Miracle, published by World Vision. Links to these, plus PR Events, reviews, and trailers to her three published books can be found on her website: www.pamelasismanbitterman.com Bitterman’s writing has emerged amidst her travels, adventures, and finally her ... - tailieumienphi.vn
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