writing process

Robin Had a Message for Me About the Writing Process

Posted by Barbara Techel

I spied this Robin gathering materials for her nest outside my bedroom window this morning. How exciting to see new life is in progress!

With her mouth full of materials, I watched as she flew to the dwarf lilac tree, hopped carefully through the tight-knit branches and added to her creation of what will soon be her home sweet home. What a perfect tree for her to build her nest where she will raise her first brood. It faces the east and gets lots of morning sunshine. Not to mention the bonus for me as I can see it from my bedroom window and my writing cottage window.

I couldn’t help but think how I’m nesting just like the Robin. No, I’m not expecting. Well, in a way, I guess you could say I am.

Late last week I received feedback from one of my beta readers for my upcoming memoir, I’m Fine Just the Way I Am. To me, writing a book is like different stages of life. From starting with the idea to writing the draft, to reworking it until it feels right to send out to beta readers, to reworking it again, then sending it off to the editor, and reworking yet again, and then finally… off to the printers! But it doesn’t’ end there.

As I watched the Robin gathering materials, adding them to what will soon be a completed nest, which will soon be filled with eggs, to her sitting on her eggs until they hatch, and eventually her baby birds who will fly off into the world on their own.

I realized writing this book the importance of the nesting stage has been for me. I’ve been preparing myself emotionally along with news things I always seem to learn about the writing process, to eventually sending my book out into the world.

I really don’t know where it will land, but yet I trust that it will.

And speaking of my book….back to the nest I must go and give new life to the text that needs reworking!

XO,

Barbara

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Making Space for Vulnerability to Morph into Confidence

Posted by Barbara Techel

Making Space for Vulnerability to Morph into Confidence

There is much in life that requires courage. And just because we may master it once doesn’t mean we won’t have to face it again in some other aspect. It also takes time when we find ourselves facing yet another layer we wish to shed and trusting that courage will be granted to us yet again. It’s building that inner muscle one day at a time that eventually you begin to feel a new strength gaining that you didn’t know you had.

I’m feeling this as I’m closing in on nearing the half-way point of going through the second draft of my manuscript, I’m Fine Just the Way I Am.

When the spark occurred last winter, seemingly out of the blue, as I drove to meet a friend for lunch, that perhaps I could write about the dark period I faced last year, I just wasn’t sure I could do it. It felt so incredibly vulnerable.

But then it began to morph into a possibility that perhaps by sharing my story, it could help someone else. But yet, I just wasn’t sure. And while I began this manuscript mid-way through 2018, there were many days I felt like I was trudging knee deep in muck…slogging through with so many doubts and fear that plagued me step-by-step.

Little-by-little courage started to make itself known which led to a growing confidence in writing this book. My writing flows so much easier these days than when I first began and it feels incredibly good. 

Just yesterday, as I do to each week to help set the tone, I randomly pick an oracle card from Tosha Silver’s deck, The Wild Offering. It’s a deck I have sitting on a small table in my bathroom. Perhaps an odd place you may think to keep an oracle card deck. But I love seeing the card I picked for the week where I can reflect on it several times throughout my day. 

When I finished my writing session this morning, I reflected on this line of the card: “You make space for something larger to take hold.” 

Writing a book I believe takes courage. It has taken for me the willingness to be with my shadows, my pain, and my fears, and to transcend them. While I’ll always be a work in progress and still falter at times, I have a new gained confidence I didn’t have a year ago.

The fear that felt so intensely consuming does not have the terrifying charge it had to it just a year ago. Writing for me is a way in which I’m able to witness myself transform. Going through the second draft, I have this new confidence that is guiding me that I wouldn’t have had, had I not been willing to take the necessary inward journey I did last year.

All of this has contributed to what I believe Tosha’s card is saying that it has made space not only for the evolved me to come through, but by also sharing this with other’s through my writing, may just perhaps allow for someone else to find the courage and confidence they seek to expand into who they wish to be, too.

And then that person holds that new vibrational space for another to do so…and it causes a ripple for yet another and another.

XO,

Barb

Update On My New Memoir Plus Exciting Change to My Website

Posted by Barbara Techel
Update On My New Memoir Plus Exciting Change to My Website
The Wise Gidget Photo credit: Lisa A. Lehmann

Thought you might like to hear an update about the new memoir I continue to work on called, I’m Fine Just the Way I Am. And I also want to let you know of an exciting new change to my website.

I find it intriguing and interesting that the title of my new book is in alignment with the change to my website.

First the update on my book. Writing a memoir isn’t always easy, especially moving through the painful experiences which got me to a new level of understanding that I’m now at. It means as I write this book, I’m delving back into moments that were difficult – and in all honesty, brought me to my knees.

But as life coach, Jocelyn Mercado, who recently did a four-week online course called, Learning to Fly, it’s the being brought to our knees, that we are invited to open to the gift of just that, and learning to fly. Because the truth is that throughout our lives we are continually invited to take flight in new and expanded ways.

Working on this memoir, I’ve had my ups and downs, wanting to throw in the towel, but also moments of elation and joy…this is all part of the process. I’m reminded of this each time I write a new book and how far I’ve come. 

My last memoir, Wisdom Found in the Pause – Joie’s Gift I wrote as part one and part two. In many ways I see this book in much the same way, and for that I can say, as I continue to work on the first draft, I’m about a third way into part two.

This is a celebration point for me and why I wanted to share with you too. This point in the book is now about sharing what it is I’ve come to learn, understand and grow from the difficulties, in hopes it will help others.

Over the summer I also had a photo shoot done for a potential book cover. If all goes as planned, the photo I chose which is a shot of Gidget and me, will be the one for the cover. But that will have to wait to be revealed at a later date. 😉 

And now for the change to my website…

As I’ve now expanded my work, and my new service and oracle guidance sessions as an Oracle Guide— to serve as a guide to empower and encourage women who want to step into their best and true selves, I felt it was time for a change.

Because of my own personal growth journey and one I continue to walk, I’ll be sharing the URL to my website going forward as barbaratechel.com. You’ll still be able to access my website via joyfulpaws.com and the site itself remains the same in content. 

I remember years and years ago my first life coach, Diane, asking me why I didn’t like to be called Barbara and instead preferred Barb. It was really about my own insecurity, lack of self-confidence, not feeling worthy or good enough, and the list went on and on.

And while I still often go by Barb, and it’s many that refer to me in this way, it’s the Barbara in me that I’ve come to appreciate and love…and changing my website name is my way of honoring this.

And so it was in realizing during a difficult time of a chronic health issue with Gidget, and a fatal mistake I almost made, but came to trust she was fine just the way she was, that I also came to accept myself as fine the way I was, and am. More about this to come in my new memoir…stay tuned!

XO,

Barb