Author • Publishing Coach • Creative Catalyst
During the 1990s, I was determined to write as many pages in service of my professional life as I had written to the men whose swirls inspired hundreds of pages of poems, exhortations, sermons, and manipulations, I outlined eight writing projects, secured an agent, and sold my first book to a publisher. Since then I have written four more books. I imagine them as daughters, born of the vow of faithfulness to myself.

As an author I have never begun a project with a blank page. In my experience writing is more like gathering words, regularly turning toward them, and then crafting them to reach beyond, beneath, in back of themselves. Each idea, outline, and assignment begins with a ritual reading of my journals and writings for inspiration, for the kernel that will eventually become the chapter, article, keynote address, lecture, performance piece, or book.

As the words travel from my journal (private musings rooted in the fleshiness of my tears, sweat, longing, arousal, and fear) to book, article, and lecture (public platforms and positions crafted for an audience), they are often drained of their personal vulnerability, of the messiness of ordinary life that gave birth to them in the first place.

Yet underneath the public words, the private fleshiness pulsates: there she is: the abandoned girl, longing for her mother, heard in the reworked prayers of the feminist theologian: “Our Mother, who art within us;” the fearful girl, befriending the darkness of solitary confinement, heard in the priestess’ tribute to Mother Darkness; the fierce adolescent, wrestling for her place as world-changer among the boys, heard in the iconoclast’s challenge: “God the father has remained an undisturbed idol for too long;” and the troubled young woman, struggling to love her body, to come out of hiding, heard in the words of the WomanChurch minister: “It is right and good that you are woman.”

Even when my words are addressed to a couple, an audience, a congregation, a publisher, or a class, they tell my story. Listen in the spaces between and around and within the words, and you will hear my childhood longings. Nothing has been lost or forgotten. In the roundabout way life works, all is re-membered, re-surrected, re-constituted, redemptively re-enacted. Listen deeply enough to any author’s words and you will touch their personal vulnerability.

Once tossed to the winds as public writings, my writings developed a life of their own. Some are used by others in their dissertations, published books, magazines, newsletters, web postings, and course readers. They are quoted by kindred spirits—words from Imagine a Woman in Love With Herself quoted by the founder of Femail Creations as her inspiration for dreaming big, and by angry detractors—words from A God Who Looks Like Me used as evidence that the Teletubbies are part of a god-less conspiracy. In the fullness of time, musing becomes word becomes journal entry becomes public expression becomes flesh again in the experience of the reader.

Inspired by the journey to embrace my creativity and calling, I am a Publishing Coach. I remind my clients that they are individualized expressions of creative intelligence, idea-generators fueled by the creative powers of the universe. Along the way they learn the difference between ideas that splash across the expanse of their minds like fireworks, disappearing into the night, and ideas that linger and demand their sustained attention. Supported by the BAB Team, my clients take these tenacious ideas, propelled by their own strong YES, to the publishing finish line!

Patricia Lynn Reilly is the founder of BAB Coaching and Publication Services and Imagine a Woman International. Patricia’s published writings include four books of non-fiction and Words Made Flesh, an anthology of her poetry and prose. Click PLR Books tab to learn more about her books. If you’re inspired by Patricia’s personal story to take the next step with your book project, schedule a one-hour Strategy Session. If you’re ready to author your own life, visit www.imagineawoman.com for inspiration and support.