Last weekend was the first Successful Muse Weekend Workshop, Embolden Your Inner Writer. A dedicated group of writers attended including two people working on book projects, one graduate student completing a major academic paper and a business writer. How did Successful Muse help this disparate band of writers? Beautifully. Here’s what one soon-to-be – book author had to say,

“Thanks for a great workshop! I got a lot out of it, and I’ve been doing some good revising of my manuscript this week.”

And just what did she and her co-writers do in the workshop to make it valuable? Experiment. Experimentation in writing is a key to a successful writing process. Successful Muse participants  tried on alternative attitudes and notions about writing and what it meant them to write as well as learned about some of the beliefs and orientations that form the undercurrents that draw them, at times, away from their desired goal of writing.

These undercurrents pull on writers like ocean currents on unwitting swimmers. Unless you are aware of them and have ways to gather your focus against them, they will carry you further and further out to sea with few markers to let you know you are drifting. Before you know it, that project you were excited about a week or two ago starts looking older, drier and dustier every time you think about it. Eventually, you’re so far away from shore you break into a despondent sweat at the thought of ever getting back to where you want to be.

Successful Muse teaches you to swim against the tides of negative beliefs about yourself, your writing and your prospects. Successful Muse teaches you to be mindful of the attitudes and beliefs you inadvertently hold that angle your writing process away from your goals. You learn to have a solid core and strong focus so you are not helplessly awash in the sea of motivations and demands that quash your writing dreams.

While they swam against the “don’t you dare sit down and write” tide, this weekend’s motley crew produced page after page. Rewrites blossomed, essays budded, and mind maps spread over newsprint pads like Morning Glories after a spring rain. ‘Happy hour’ took on new meaning, as, loosely linked in common cause, everyone spread out in comfortable chairs and sofas to take on the particular challenges of his or her internal world and with clearer direction and intentionality to pursue their writing dreams.

Contact us:

The Successful Muse, 705 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02141 617.817.4302 (cell)