Is There Divine Influence In Your Writing? (Part 1 Of 3)

If the Power of the Divine is an important part of your daily life, should it not also be an important part of your writing life? During a time when publically embracing God is politically incorrect and often hidden from sight, might you dare to be anti-PC by coming out of the dark with your Divine to share love and wisdom in your writing bestowed by your Divine?

My guest writer this week is Kaye Bewley who shares part 1 of her 3 part literary thoughts in words on the power of divine influence in your writing life. Kaye Bewley is the founder of BewleyBooks, supporting writers to be confident in creating their message that changes the world while embracing their spirituality. She is a certified psychotherapist of the heart and mind and author of several fiction and non-fiction books.

Is There Divine Influence in Your Writing? (Part 1 of 3)

“Why are we here?” “What are we supposed to do?” And, more to the point, “Where do we go?” These questions have proved to be some of the most difficult that have ever plagued those who have taken up the pen. However, we’re almost twenty years into the new millennium, with thousands of years of written history behind us and trillions of dollars/yen/euro/sterling etc. invested into religion, science and politics combined and still, no one has arrived at a satisfactory answer to this fantastically elusive set of questions.

Writers everywhere have most certainly contemplated an attempt to tell a story about these questions. Fictional and factual. In my opinion, at least, the Dan Brown’s and Robert Bauval’s of this world should be put on a pedestal, if only because they got our Brainiac cogs whirring again.

For some reason or other, humanity is well aware we are on the cusp of something strangely satisfying yet all too irritatingly elusive. Yet, instead of giving up, ideas torment our individual minds. Ananda Villages are being set up everywhere to delve deeper into it (https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/spiritual-bloodline-is-raising-consciousness). Through coincidentally combined thoughts and oddly apt dreams, we are being forced to pursue the questions and yes, to strive for answers. But, how many more times does this message have to be rammed home to our collective unconscious? The urge is there, within us. And therein lies the conundrum.

The urge is within.

I hear you cry, “What the heck does that mean?”

For an author, writing about the oddities of life is the norm. Controversy can be key in securing headlines. In the heady maze of publishing everyone wants to stand out. What stands out, sells. But what most authors don’t seem to understand is that it takes a tremendous amount of courage to be different. To go against the tide of converging opinion. An author who writes a different story has to have enough confidence to be firm in their beliefs, strong in their personal convictions and rely heavily on the factual evidence they have unearthed to back them.

That horrid word, rejection, is par for the course for many authors though – including me. Way back in the vibrantly weird days of the padded-shouldered, big-hair-do 1980s, my collection of stories were of the kind that kept happy company with thousands of other hopefuls in the darkest of back room slush piles. I wrote enough to build-up a large library of rejection slips that my filing cabinet was abundant with them.

Up until 1988, there seemed to be only four avenues available for getting your work into print.

Post your package on a wing and a prayer – into the labyrinthine publishing halls
Become an academic – and publish your agreeable findings
Go to a vanity publisher – and pay extortionate rates with no promise of sales
Know someone in the business

I’ve tried all of them. Points 1 to 3 were a bit of a challenge but the most fun was with point 4, meeting all those fanciable celebrities while working for the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News. Sadly, due to my youthful lack of confidence, my plentiful supply of scripts didn’t get a look-in.

From my brief experience working for Macmillan publishing, I found that the world to be a conglomerate monster. In fact, think of all those doors in the film Monsters Inc. and you’ll be a fraction of your way to understanding why that might be so. To get that precious door to publishing heaven wedged open, you need the access key by three means: luck, chance or being a celebrity with a hoard of fawning followers. There’s actually a fourth too, persistence.

In an effort to bring your thoughts back to the question, Is there a Divine Influence in Your Writing? as well as the annoyingly complex three that followed, I’ll use a point of view detailed in Bill Geringswald’s book Infinite Possibilities – A Spiritual Awakening and ask you to take a blind leap of faith. In that leap, I’d like you to take a look at the collective body of mankind. For just one moment I’ll ask you kindly to allow your mind to place yourself in the glittering star-filled sky, then to look down and view the image of our beautiful earth. As you look at the gorgeous blue ball you call home, imagine your family (humanity) beavering away like tiny ants. From that lofty vantage point, you might just see the many similarities amongst us.

Now, return to earth and take a look at the photographs on these two sites: http://www.gustavosato.com/#pantone and http://humanae.tumblr.com Carl Larsson and Angelica Dass have impressed me with their extraordinary ideas of photographing skin pigments and stringing those images together – like a Pantone pallet in a Home Depot store. Their ideas stem from the notion that, from the lightest albino through to the darkest of browns, humanity is connected in all its Technicolor glory. We are not as dissimilar from each other as we think.

Let’s face it, the shiny new Millennium has got a few scratches on it now and, as it nears its twentieth birthday perhaps, just perhaps, visualizing the earth from afar and the whole of humanity as a Pantone color is something akin to what only God knows. And, just as there are a myriad of ways to view humanity, there are equally that amount of ways to view the school of publishing.

I say a school because life is always handing us lessons to learn. The thing that everyone seems to be slowly becoming aware of is, the lessons we need to learn are not about the world ‘out there’. Which brings me back to the four simple words in this chapter:

The urge is within.

If you have the urge within you to write, it will never leave you. But you’ll notice the urge is not ‘out there’. Of course, out there, there will be a constant reminder, signs will be everywhere you go, but those signs originated ‘in here’. You will recognize coincidences you thought of only yesterday, you’ll read or write a sentence and it will be repeated by someone else (perhaps on the radio or tv), you’ll have your inner questions answered in odd ways and even your dreams will be presented in a manner that gives you solutions to problems you have been mulling over for a long time.

These are the divine influences that help you connect with your wider purpose. Together, they join forces like a realm of angels on the stairs to heaven, to offer tremendously silent and subtle signs. Ignore them and you’ll find yourself facing locked doors and seemingly immovable boulders along the way. I know. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

The trick is to notice them. And, as Magnus Walker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeumF9SwxCU) would say, pay attention to that small voice in your gut. If you want to write, don’t ignore it. Train yourself to become aware of the subtle signs given from within. (https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/survival-keys-and-a-meditation-discover-your-inner-voice)

To learn anything new takes tremendous courage. As a writer, you need the discipline to trust in your own convictions. You also need to respect your dreams and to persist with them in the face of (at times) horrendous adversity. To be honest with yourself is the best compliment you can pay yourself, with it, you’ll stay loyal to your own path.

Today, there are a myriad of wonderful ways to get that urge to get into print, satisfied. And, if you have an urge within you to answer to those big questions “Why are we here?” “What are we supposed to do?” And, “Where do we go from here?” that elude this big wide world, read the next article.

Guest Author Bio:

KAYE Bewley is a Psychotherapist, Author, Presenter, and Publisher. Her psychotherapy work focuses on helping writers individually and in groups through her workshops. She inspires and encourages writers on how to get a handle on their emotions so they can publish and promote their work using emotional empathy and spiritual compassion.

Having worked her way through the maze of media, marketing, publishing and academia, environments, she has a unique inside track on the situation of the publishing industry.

Her own novels and screenplays have a tantalizing metaphorical message woven through them while her nonfiction work focusses on how to confidently navigate the emotional maze – to secure the best writing life you can imagine. She set-up her own small-publishing platform to assist authors with an inspirational message.

Photo Credit: https//pixabay.comendream-woman-face-eyes-death-1308791 CCO Public No Attribution Required

About the Author: Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos-three time cancer survivor whose guided dreams diagnosed her illness as seen on Dr. Oz, NBC News, in Newspapers and magazines, and detailed in her book Surviving Cancerland: Intuitive Aspects of Healing. She’s a Contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Soul, TV/Radio Host/Producer- Wicked Housewives On Cape Cod™, the Kat Kanavos Show, Internationally Syndicated Columnist, and Lecturer who promotes patient advocacy and Spiritual Guidance. www.KathleenOkeefeKanavos.com