Notes from Impact Writing Weekend
Soul messages from your Future Self
Recently I held my first ever Impact Writing Workshop in San Diego. It was intense, challenging, delightful, funny, gut wrenching, and revealing. These gathered authors caused me to dig deeper than I had ever gone in helping to unearth and share not only how I write, but also how to see the world as a writer.
I felt that my main goal was not only to share writing tips and break through ideas and broad concepts about ‘How to Write Your Story,’ but also to help midwife these hovering living stories out of the minds and hearts onto the written page.
Most of the people attending had been told by others many times that “they needed to write a book.” Several of them held stories they had never fully shared for more than twenty years.
One of the challenges for me was that I didn’t just want to swim in a sea of words with them, and help them select perhaps a better word here and there. That is the work that others can do, and do well. What I felt my calling was, in this particular workshop at least, was to help these women realize that the ideas stirring with them were not random, but actually soul messages from their Future Self that already existed in the mind of God.
That being the case, their first and greatest task was to surrender, and trust that they had a Divine Partner in their endeavor.
We did two minute writing prompts, seven minute writing prompts, fifteen minute writing prompts on pre selected items that had nothing to do with their stories. Or did they?
I taught them how their natural Path Elemental wiring was most likely not only where the ideas were generating, but also where they were stuck.
Only by moving through what I have created and called The Genesis Generator, one quadrant at a time, sometimes one tiny section at a time, would their books and messages be born.
We did impromptu skits, with great hilarity ensuing. We learned history about other women who surrendered to their story.
I shared my challenges and most difficult obstacles in my thirty year journey of authoring more than a dozen published books with multiple publishing houses, editors and objectives. We defined what Impact Writing is, and how it differs from many of the other kinds that exist.
Several of the attendees were able to name their books for the first time. Others realized that writing was no longer just a hobby for them, but a sacred appointment with the Divine, not to be dismissed lightly.
We went deep, high, wide, and walked into the fire together. Everyone left with clear chapter outlines as well as knowing how to fill those out, one focused sentence at a time.
Each of us individually walked through a pair of swinging doors, walked up to the Supply Officer, and said “I’m here to get my book.” The Supply Officer (bar tender in the skit) asked “How are you gonna pay for it?”
And every person there threw down the packet they had been given and said with confidence “Here—take it out of this.”
The packet? Mustard seeds, each with their name on it.
And within their hearts new tools and the knowledge….“You Got This.”
Watch out World. A new group of Impact Writers has been born, and are ready to move mountains.
LBJ ~ Live. Breathe. Joy.
Next Impact Writing Weekend
Some amazing humans are working on a new website for me and my body of work that has been published over the past thirty years. I am so grateful for their talent and skillset. I will offer a link soon once the site is public. We are tentatively holding June 6-8, 2025 as the next Impact Writing Weekend in San Diego, California. I will offer details soon. If you missed the first event I invite you to stop what you are doing and commit to writing your story and finishing your book.
Divine Partner, thank you!