Your Book Deserves a Soulful Initiation

Before a book takes shape on the page, it is listened for. Not as an idea to be organized, but as something already alive and seeking language. It often makes itself known through the body first, through sensation, through a quiet pressure that refuses to be ignored.

This is not about early pages or polished concepts. It begins earlier than that, in the place where an idea has not yet learned how to speak. Often it arrives as a question rather than an answer: why this story, why this voice, and why now?

Many people assume a book begins with an outline or a premise. In my experience, it begins with a return. A sentence that won’t release its hold. An image that continues to surface. A knowing that resists what publishers, teachers, or writing culture insist a book must be in order to be viable.

When there is resistance to writing, it is rarely a matter of discipline or talent. More often, it comes from the accumulation of expectations about how a writer should work, how ideas should be organized before they are fully formed, and how meaning should arrive on command. That pressure has a way of shutting down the living seed of a book before it has a chance to develop.

I recognize this moment well. I’ve encountered it in my own work and in the work of others. Half-written documents. Circling fragments. A quiet certainty that something important is present, even when it cannot yet be named.

This stage does not require correction. It requires care.

There is a time in the life of a book when the work is to stay close to the idea rather than shape it. To allow writing to be exploratory and uncontained. To step away from voices that make the process feel heavy, evaluative, or prematurely structured.

Listening begins when you speak honestly about what has been living in your body around the work. How it feels to carry it. What draws you toward it. What feels risky, unreasonable, or difficult to explain. What frightens you about it, and what feels quietly inevitable.

You may not be able to see the book in its entirety. Often, only the next few steps are visible. That is enough. The real question is not what the book should become, but what it is asking of you right now, and what kind of energy is required to meet it.

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A note for context: I’m sharing this because I see this stage misunderstood and rushed more often than it needs to be. Not every phase of creative work benefits from clarity, and not every moment calls for structure. Knowing the difference can change how a book comes into being.

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The Book Initiation Session

A private session for the moment when a book is ready to begin.

This 75-minute one-on-one session is a space to listen for the story that is asking to be written and to orient yourself to how it wants to unfold. Together, we attend to what is present, what is emerging, and what kind of structure will best support the work ahead. Rather than rushing toward form or outcome, this session centers attention on receiving the book as it is arriving and clarifying the conditions it needs in order to be written with integrity.

Who this is for: For writers who sense a book taking shape and want to meet it with care, discernment, and respect for it's natural timing.

1:1 · 75 Minutes · $333

Book The Book Initiation Session
A sacred, strategic beginning for the book only you can write.

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