Why are you writing what you intend to write? What is its deepest purpose or essence? Why you? Why this piece? Why now?
It’s important to look beyond the surface. (I’m doing a marketing campaign, a blog post, a flash-enabled web site.) You may have reasons, but go deeper. Explore your project from the perspective of the heart. And by staying in the aware heart energy, you can access a deeper guidance and a deeper why. This is a process of deeper engagement to see what is there and also what is not yet visible. To read on the lines and between the lines. To hear the notes and the silence and space between the notes.
Sometimes, like my client Barb, a whole book comes as a download as a result of some dramatic trauma. Her book on grief spilled out over a weekend as she continued to heal from the loss of her life partner and sweetheart. For years after she wrote it, she reported, “I’d still cry when I reread it.” The unacknowledged grief, the hidden and ungrieved grieving, creates a heavy load. We all encounter many losses in our lives. Learning to take the time to acknowledge and embrace every one of them is the dark path towards the light of healing. This is her message for her readers.
No matter how the message of your brainchild/heartchild comes through — whether through a download all at once or a steady progress of creation — the book that encapsulates the lessons and insights makes up the heart of your message.
But for many, once that’s settled, it seems like that should be all it takes. You’ve gotten your message onto the page after all.
That’s not all. Questions like, “Now what? What’s next?” can be the biggest stumbling blocks. Because it seems like you should be done, but you are in fact just starting. What is your message without people to hear it and connect with it and you?
Your book’s message in itself is designed to be of service to your perfect people, the ones you are here to help. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be here reading this. Service and contribution are things you think about. So the main message, your service and love is done.
In truth, the writing you do next is just as important as the writing of the main message in your book. This is the writing you do in service to the message you are here to share. These are the words that connect you to your people, the ones who have maybe heard similar messages before, but they will “get it” in a brand-new and deeper way from you.
You’re probably not going to want to hear that the writing you do in service now to your message probably wears the clothing of “marketing” and “sales.” Too many messengers shy away from that part of the process. Keep in mind that you are still in service to your main message. This is the process of bringing it into a more public conversation. At the same time, the marketing messages need to remain true to the heart of your greater work. For most of us, it seems like a different kind of a thing — this marketing and sales writing.
In the spirit of the great duality on this planet, I say, “It isn’t different. And yet it is.” Both/And. There are commonalities between your message, mission, and book AND the writing (and talking) you do to share your message in the marketplace of ideas. They need to be of a piece.
But in some ways, the marketing message, which is what opens the public conversation, is even more important. It has to catch the hearts of those who can hear it from you.
Here’s one way to approach the marketing message of your message.
Think about it as a way you are opening the conversation. Creating the space for dialogue, back-and-forth, feedback, response. Marketing messages take a different kind of crafting, and you can do it — writing to sell without selling your soul or selling out your message. Once again, bring the heart energies to the task of shaping your marketing messages that will be in service to your book, your main message.
Use that awareness and care you have for the people who can only hear it from you in sharing the gifts and greatness you are here to give.
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