1. September: The Ordinary World & The Call

Get ready, get set! Time to prepare for your adventure!

During this month’s sessions you’ll focus on getting your ducks in a row, establishing your routine, addressing the mundane, yet practical aspects of setting yourself up for success. You will identify:

What project (story) you will be working on in this class?

Where will you write?

When is your best (most-productive) time to write?

What socks you like to wear, music you like to listen to, snacks you like to nibble on when you’re writing?

*Writing prompts:

What’s the #1 thing you can do to set yourself up for a successful journey?

How will grab your audience by the collar when you start your book (and don’t let go until the end)?

What is the overview (beginning, middle, and end) of the book you’re writing?

The Call to Adventure

What is your true calling?

What’s calling you?

Time to call it out!

These sessions are about allowing the space for your higher calling to become amplified so it can be heard and felt. By identifying your MISSION STATEMENT (aka purpose, your BIG PICTURE, and your WHY) you’ll discover its magical ability to elevate you above the noise and grasping of your inner critic, saboteur, and scaredy-cat. You’ll establish your writing ritual to call in your muse, i.e.:

Lighting a candle, sage and/or incense

Saying a prayer

Calling to mind your MISSION STATEMENT

*Writing prompts:

Why are you writing this book? Who do you hope reads it and why?

What is your hero being called to do?

What is your hero’s WHY (why do they go on the adventure or mis-adventure)? What do they need? What happens if they don’t get it? What happens if they do?

*the “Hero” in the writing prompts relates to your story’s protagonist.

2. October: The Refusal of the Call

Time to roll out the red carpet and officially meet your Unholy Trinity (come to Mama!)

• Critic

• Saboteur and

• Scaredy-cat

We will never get rid of these three, but we can learn to open our arms and invite them to cozy up by the fire of our creative process…and allow them to chime in with important, constructive insights. The key is, once in plain view, they can’t set booby traps behind the scenes. During these sessions, you’ll identify the ways to alchemize the pain of unworthiness, worthlessness, distractibility, pain and fear and use that as fuel for the fire of your process.

*Writing prompts:

• What is your biggest resistance to your success?

• What is your hero’s biggest conflict about embarking on the path that’s calling them?

• What’s their inner tug-of-war (conflicting values)?

3. November: Meet the Mentor & Cross the Threshold

Who are your people?

Have you appointed your Knights of the Roundtable, aka five people who inspire you most to write? Alive or deceased, real or fictional, who inspires, motivates, and gives you the shot in the arm and the kick in the booty you need to keep on going?

Who is your Avatar, a.k.a. the ideal reader for your book?

In these sessions you’ll identify these special beings, so you can…

• Personalize who you’re writing your book for

• Remember, you are in league with the great ones who’ve paved the road for you

• Call on these beings when you hit a wall, by asking, “What would my mentor do in this situation?” and then do it.

*Writing prompts:

• Who is your “North Star”, aka the person who most inspires your writing? Why? How are you like them?

• Who does your hero most admire—who’s their North Star on their journey?

Cross the Threshold

Got commitment issues?

Join the club.

• These sessions you’ll open your Pandora’s Box around issues of accountability. You’ll…

• Shine a light on your past triggers around prioritizing your creative work

• Illuminate the subtle and obvious things you do to wiggle out of getting your writing done, from social media distractions, to flossing your dog’s teeth, to cleaning your chimney.

• Alchemize the saboteur, critic, and scaredy-cat, so they can join you diving in.

*Writing prompts:

• What will it take for you to commit completely to your higher calling? What would change in your life if you did?

• What is the moment of crossing the threshold for your hero? Describe it in detail how they move from the ordinary world across this chasm.

• Describe “Threshold Guardians” (antagonists) who make this transition treacherous?

4. December: Tests, Allies, and Enemies:

What will my parents, friends from school, and the Jones’s think?

Will I lose my job?

Will I get tossed out of polite society when my book comes out?

This month, you’ll identify those who:

• Support you

• Judge or criticize you

• Might be affected by what you write

This process is essential for navigating through the roadblocks (real or perceived) that might get in your way related to how your book could affect the people in your life.

By addressing these issues, you’ll discover ways to circumvent them from stopping you, so you can keep on keeping on.

*Writing prompts:

• Who are your allies? Who are your biggest challengers and how will you ace the tests, traps, and obstacles they might try to set in your path?

• Who are your hero’s champions? Who are their biggest challengers? How are these people a reflection of their own shadow and light?

5. January: Belly of the Whale

Time to get wet!

This month we address the

• Wonders

• Perils

• Blessings of getting swallowed whole by your writing process (this is a good thing, BTW).

As social creatures we desire connection with our fellow humans, and yet, in order to truly tap into your creative mojo, so your book can write itself, you must be willing to plug into a higher frequency and get absorbed by your muse. In these sessions we address ways to become balanced so you can honor your oceanic genius.

*Writing prompts:

• Describe what it’s like to become immersed in the writing zone?

• What is your hero’s belly of the whale moment? Describe their fight or acquiescence?

• What do they learn about themselves in the belly?

6. February: The Supreme Ordeal (Opportunity)

Hello darkness my old friend ☺

This month, we take a deep breath and expand ourselves to embrace the dark night of the soul. This is when you experience a custom-tailored:

• Breakdown/breakthrough

• Moment of the greatest challenge

• Catalyst for a quantum leap in consciousness and in your writing

By preparing for this, you’ll see your greatest challenge as your greatest gift (though hiding in deep cover), one for which you will have already baked a cake.

When you face and embrace your biggest challenge—the one that might dare trip you up regarding writing and finishing your book, you become invincible, unstoppable, and a force to be reckoned with.

*Writing prompts:

• How have you handled your biggest challenges in the past? How will you apply that to keeping on keeping on with your writing?

• How does your hero deal with their darkest night of the soul? What’s your hero’s “daddy” issues? How do they overcome them?

7. March: The Reward

How much good can you handle?

Are you able to receive the perks, blessings, positive feedback, affirmation about your great work?

• Do you revel in it?

• Push it away for fear it will make you soft?

• Seek it out before it comes in organically?

This month, you’ll address your relationship to pleasure and expand your ability to take time to fill your tank during milestone moments.

*Writing prompts:

• How will you receive the wins that come your way as a successful writer?

• What are the moments of grace in your story? How does your hero handle these gifts?

8. April: The Return & The Resurrection

The party’s orver? (that’s not a typo)

Just when you finally get in the groove, established a healthy relationship with the solitude you need, getting whipped up in your writing process, you might find yourself resisting switching gears. Eventually it’s time to reconnect with your purpose for writing your book in the first place, who you’re writing it for, and begin the process of preparing to face the ordinary world. In these sessions, you’ll address:

• Perfectionism and what it takes to finish your book

• Transforming FOGO (Fear of Going Out) to JOGO (Joy of Going Out)

• Ways to attract an agent and publisher, and marketing your book to the public

*Writing prompts:

• How will you overcome your biggest challenge to sharing your book with an editor or agent?

• What kind of help or support does your hero need to complete their journey?

The Resurrection

Will the real you please stand up!

These sessions are about TRANSFORMATION, discovering, as a result of this process, you will have changed, becoming a different person than the one who first embarked upon this journey. In truth, you will be more yourself than you’ve ever been before:

a. You will be an author

b. You will have written a book.

c. You will be putting your book baby out in the world

*Writing prompts:

• How have you changed, personally, as a result of writing this book? What have you learned about yourself?

• How has your hero changed as a result of their journey? What is the most radical difference/outer and inner sign of transformation?

9. May: Home with the Elixir

Time to CELEBRATE!!!

In this final month, besides having your cake (with extra frosting) and eating it too, and sharing it with your protagonist (hero), you will be reminded that the journey isn’t complete until your creation can be shared with others (when your book is published, or at least one that is ready for an agent who can facilitate the next step for you). To this end, you will identify:

The mental, emotional, spiritual framework for how to wear your soul on your sleeve (aka, handing your book baby to a wet nurse, then sending it off to play with other kids)

Publishing possibilities and support for successfully launching your book

Ways to psychologically and spiritually ready yourself for the joys and challenges of becoming a superstar (☺).

*Writing prompts:

• How do you feel about yourself, having completed your book? What are you most proud of? What celebratory thing will you do to mark this occasion?

• What’s the ending of your book? What’s the payoff for your hero, for your reader? What does your hero do to mark their full circle?