"" Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog: June 2014

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Imagineering Your Future

Dear Fellow Writer,

OMG, it's the end of the week again!

Did you achieve your weekly writing goals? I hope so. Every little helps.

Try not to judge yourself on your daily word output. Rather add up all you did in a week - and divide that number by five. That should make you feel better!

This week I wrote 10,000 words for my new novel, Purge, bringing it to 31,500, about half way through the first draft.

All well and good but I realized I'd left out quite a bit of story that will need to be added next week - before I carry on with the second half of the book.

Some of my Amazon Kindle books are currently selling for around the ONE DOLLAR mark.

Click HERE to find out more.
I've also put up an interview on my author page at Amazon.
Keep writing! 



Imagineering Your Future
Inagineering Your Future
Imagineering Your Future


People often ask me about effective goal-setting in relation to a writing career. 

Where do you start?

Well, what you have to remember about any kind of planning is that, to ensure success, it must be an emotional experience. It's not enough to merely make a list of 'things to do' without any kind of attachment to what you're planning. You must go deeper: to connect your desires with the subconscious.

Your subconscious mind is a fabulous place. Not only does it have a clear recollection of everything you've ever done, seen, heard, smelled, dreamed, read and experienced, it has the ability to regard the past, present and future as a single point in time.

Now.

This means that the subconscious cannot distinguish between what has happened and what will happen. It sees all kinds of images simultaneously, most of which are shielded from our conscious minds for practical reasons: we wouldn't be able to focus on much of anything if we were constantly bombarded by everything in our brains. The conscious mind is the dam, whereas the subconscious is a vast reservoir of dreams, reality, emotions, experiences, possibilities, hopes, fears and, yes, visions of your own future.

It is therefore imperative to fantasize about your future, in as much detail as possible.

When you use your imagination to create strong, sensory-filled images, the subconscious mind cannot tell whether these are real or not. Hence, when your mind thinks about a situation and tries to make sense of it, it will give as much weight to fantasy as it does to reality.

Think of your goals as beacons. The stronger the light, the easier the beacons are to see through the darkness of your intentions. When the subconscious is aware that you are consciously interested in reaching these beacons, it will help you. And the more you visualize your perfect life, the more energy your mind will put into helping you pull those goals closer - and manifest that perfect life in your present: the now of the subconscious.

Got that? So before you do any planning, you need to do some serious daydreaming!

It's not necessary to formalize this process. Many sources suggest meditation or at least sitting or lying down with your eyes closed and then visualizing a perfect, alternate future.

However, in my experience, (and Einstein's) it's simply enough to idly daydream while doing anything or nothing in particular. The real trick is to have fun with it.

Rather than just imagine the future you want, you should try to attach emotions to the images you create. Good emotions: happiness, joy, elation, satisfaction, pride. Make your emotions so real you can feel your heart pumping in anticipation. This works because these happy, fun, emotion-charged images are the ones that the subconscious gets most attached to - and regards as most relevant to you.

Think about it. When we were growing up, we thought about our futures and how great things would be when we were allowed out on our own, when we were free. We then spent our twenties full of expectation, basically trying to re-create the joy we thought was going to be ours. The problem is that most of us are taught not to believe in our dreams and, over time, we are essentially forced to learn to 'accept reality.'

However, there are those of us who never do 'face reality' and go on to achieve their dreams - and these people become the ones we most admire: actors, writers, musicians, directors, composers, and celebrities in general.

The difference between them and the rest of us is simple: they never gave up.

Artistically successful people keep believing, usually against all the odds.

And if you want to change your life now, no matter what age you are, you must simply engender that same naive faith in what's possible that you had in your younger days. Or, if you've never felt that way about life, learn now to live with a new-found expectation of so-called irrational, unrealistic futures that are possible simply because you can imagine them.

Do that now. Often. Make it a habit.

Every day spend as much time as you like imagining your perfect future.

See everything in vivid detail: where you want to live, how much you want to earn, what house and car you will have, what the weather will be, what your friends will be like, everything you will be doing to fill each and every day. Make it fun and exciting. Make it perfect. Make it blissful. Make it real.

And as a writer, of course, you will want to write all this down.

But here's another aspect of this practice that you should know: that it's NOT the focus or the energy or the compelling nature of your visualizations that is the essential component of this process. Far from it. It's letting go of your future's importance to you that really counts.

Feverishly holding on to visions of a wonderful future is not what gets you there. It's the lighthearted playfulness you feel when fantasizing that takes you much further.

Comparing your current reality to your future dream life tends to bring about worry. And worry pushes back your future. You must visualize enthusiastically, yes, but you must not overly concern yourself with specific, time-stamped outcomes.

That doesn't work. 

What works is the development of an overwhelming certainty in the face of no real evidence. And by 'development' I mean letting go of worry, impatience, negativity and frustration.

Only then are you in the right space to allow positive things to happen for you.

It's a trick you play on your mind, to be sure. But it works - and it gets easier and more effective with practice

Having faith this technique works is just that - an act of faith - and no amount of rationalization will create it or interfere with it, once you understand how these things work.

So dream and dream big whenever you like and then just relax and let go, sure in the knowledge that your ideal future is coming, simply because you can make it so.

Keep Writing!
Rob Parnell


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Thursday, June 19, 2014

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: The Buckminster Fuller Principle

Dear Fellow Writer,

Thanks to everyone who bought my latest writing resource, From Zero to Hero: How to Make a LIVING Writing Fictionlast week.

You made it #1 in two Amazon categories - for which I'm very grateful.

This week I'm not selling anything in particular. Just shooting the breeze with you.

Actually I've been writing a new thriller - a thoroughly absorbing activity, I must say.

Currently up to 20,000 words - about a quarter of the way through. My intention is keep going with this novel every day and finish the first draft without stopping for a break. Maintaining that kind of focus can be challenging but is not impossible. 

Clearly, lots of other authors do it!

I hope the following article will help improve your own motivation to write and follow your heart.

Keep writing!


The Buckminster Fuller Principle - Or, How to Stop Worrying About Money and Start Living
The Buckminster Fuller Principle


       Before I began the Easy Way to Write, I wasn't sure how to make the transition from nine-to-five employment to being a full-time writer. To be honest, I probably didn't know what I wanted to do, only that I didn’t want to work nine-to-five!
      On a whim, much to the chagrin of my then partner, I engaged the services of a career coach to help me find my way. Six sessions cost me a thousand bucks, which was a lot to me at the time but, really, it was money well spent.
      Among many other things, my coach taught me about what he called theBuckminster Fuller Principle, a concept that I now fully understand and can attest is a true phenomenon.
      Richard Buckminster Fuller was an architect, author and visionary inventor. Despite being expelled from Harvard twice for failing in his studies he was later given many honorary doctorates and was president of Mensa for nine years. When he was alive, he was full of great ideas, had a keen mind and like most of us, he hated working for a living.
      Indeed, he couldn’t understand why so many people in our society are seemingly obsessed with having day jobs, when the world is so plentiful and technology has moved so fast as to make many forms of employment largely redundant.
      Bucky was man ahead of his time. He believed thinking hard and coming up with solutions to fix the world's problems was what we all should be doing on a daily basis, rather than merely supervising each other in the rape of the planet.
      He loved nothing more than tinkering with inventions and solving problems from his home lab - whether he made any money or not. He believed that the universe was his employer, and he was happy to be its employee.
      During his twenties, Buckminster Fuller noticed that when he was poor, he was usually forced to go back to work to support himself and his family, a situation most of us can relate to. He noticed too that while he was at work, miserable and frustrated, unable to follow his heart, his monetary situation inevitably grew worse.
      However, as he grew older, he also noticed something much more intriguing. That when he was engaged in doing work that made him happy and fulfilled, circumstances invariably conspired to keep him in that good place.
      He noticed that, as long as you don't give up on your dreams, helpful events transpire just by "pure happenstance and always in the nick of time" (his phrase) to keep you from abandoning your mission.
      Most people don't get to experience this phenomenon because they tend to give up before they let this accidental good fortune kick in.
      I know that to some this thinking might sound a bit new age and unscientific, but you need to remember that Bucky was an enormously intelligent and practical man. He wasn’t trying to sell self-help books. He had no agenda in this regard. He was merely making an observation about how he thought the universe worked on a practical level. That to some spooky degree the universe can and does provide for its inhabitants, especially when they’re happy.
      The trick to harnessing the power of the Buckminster Fuller Principle, is to have blind faith; to develop an absolute certainty that your plans will come to fruition; to work on your goals without having a fallback plan and continue on regardless of what others say; or even taking any notice of what seems to be to happening to you.
      Because when you give up or falter, the principle seems to stop working.
      Basically, you have to believe that everything will work out for the best and stop worrying. Because worrying somehow creates the problems you’re trying to avoid.
      You need to have faith in your dreams and mentally remove the urge to dwell on any obstacles.
      Too many people over-think their goals, and over-plan their execution, to the extent that they visualize all the many hurdles to getting what they want and basically talk themselves out of even starting a potentially fulfilling and prosperous new life.
      I've known quite a few people like this and they're consequently still as frustrated and unhappy as they always were because they can't summon the courage to break away from their worrywart mentality. This keeps them working at their jobs, convinced they can do no better, deserve no better, thereby perpetuating the ‘we must all work for a living’ mentality ad infinitum.
      Better to be blissfully untroubled by any future problems and maintain a healthy positive attitude as you move forward. That way you'll be in a much stronger position to deal with challenges as they arise, instead of wasting energy on imagining the worst - which probably won't happen anyway.
      This last point may seem like a frivolous observation but it's really the crux of the matter.
      Yes, there can be problems associated with going all out to become a full-time writer. However, in my experience, they're never ones you could have imagined, or could even have planned for. Therefore using time and emotion on trying to foresee impending difficulties and imagine their solutions is a waste of your precious time and energy.
      In the future, you will need all the energy and focus you can muster just to write and to be a productive and self-sufficient, well paid writer.
      And even though that eventuality is perhaps further on down the road, you need to begin working on this mentality now: start getting your head in the right space to see yourself writing every day and enjoying the lifestyle.
      Worry has no place in your thinking.
      Worry is what your mother does.
       But you are a writer and writers write.


xxxxRob Parnell

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