The Journey of Writing

I am learning a lot about the process of writing. On many levels, the easy part for me is the creative process. Words easily explode out of my mind and out through my hands. It is a joyful process that leads me into places of inner awareness and depth that I often feel in life but recognize that many cannot easily follow. It is what fascinates me about humanity. How they construct their reality and how they view that reality through their myriad lenses and filters is of massive interest to my intuitive and perceptive mind. I learned very young that while we all live in the same world, each person also lives in a bubble or series of perceptual bubbles inside that world. Those bubbles are a microcosm of the greater macrocosm that is so vast that most of us in the dimension cannot fathom the many layers and nuances because our brain is not developed enough to be able to conceive of them all simultaneously.
We love movies, television, myths, and stories because they open us up to other realities, other ways of seeing, and other ways of perceiving.
I am no different. I have many of my own lenses, and yet I am truly fascinated by the energetic flows of interesting people, complicated people, super-intelligent minds, and quirky, artistic, and unusual people.
When I watch, listen, engage, and dance in their flows of time and space, I broaden my perspective and awareness.
To master something such as a dimension of reality, one has to be fascinated with it, and willing to dive into it, and there has to be something that magnetically is so attractive that other things are temporarily set to the side.
While I have loved the journey of the dancer in me in this life, I have been walking the complicated pathways to learn and grow as a writer.
I remember a Vedic astrologer telling me that I was to become a writer, speaker, and person to inspire others through my words and how I could weave almost a spell of magic with my thoughts.
At the time, I was a dancer and not remotely aware that my perceptive abilities to see, sense, and understand subtle energy might move into the domain of writing. As a dancer, I loved to express what I felt through my body, not my mouth.
But when the Vedic Astrologer told me that, I could feel the truthfulness of what she was saying. It was like something inside woke up and said, “Finally, it is time to begin!”
But my human insecurity could not fathom the possibility that my higher self recognized as truth at that moment.
My human self had massive amounts of reasons why that would be impossible. The mind likes the familiar, which to it looked like too great of a risk. My human self … hated to fail at anything.
The mind would incessantly chatter all the multitudes of reasons why such a thing was a “fool’s errand.”
My mind said, “You don’t have a college degree in literature! You don’t spell well! You don’t have the time or discipline! Writing is boring! You are a mover and a shaker! That is for those intellectual types!”
But inside, something stirred at the possibility.
I come from a long line of Irish storytellers. Everyone in my family can “spin a yarn.” Gatherings were a joyful explosion of stories of adventure, humorous moments, and disastrous moments that should have killed us.
The Wagner side of the family was a wild bunch that could take the hardest moments in our lives and makes them darkly humorous.
As I began to write, many circumstances fell into place to allow me the doorways and opportunities to try. And I had editors that would back me up, help me take concepts, and sort them in ways that allowed me to bring them into the public setting and mind.
I thank Greta DeJong (owner of Catalyst Magazine) for being so instrumental in helping me at the beginning of this journey. She believed in me when I was still questioning myself and my ability.
I believe that all artists are helped along the way by those souls that are skilled in certain areas that we are weak.
I had been working on a Tarot book for over a decade when I met Cameron Cameron, (Yes, that was his real name.) He had been an agent in Hollywood but had gotten himself in a peck of trouble because of drugs and alcohol and had landed himself in Salt Lake City, UT, to dry out and get his life back together.
What he clearly saw was that talent inside me that was trying to explode. He also could see that he could potentially market me on many levels. That gave him ample incentive to use his magical skill on me to bring some of them out.
He was the first to sit me down with paper and a pen and told me to write whatever I wanted for 3 hours. After that time, he asked me what I thought about what I was writing.
I told him I was working on the Tarot Book, and it felt like “The Bible According to Suzanne.”
Then he told me to write a children’s story … a fairy tale.
And begin it with, “Once Upon A Time …”
He left the room and suddenly outpoured, “A long time ago, before anyone can remember, was a place we tell stories about still.  It was lost, when a great Myst took it from us, above the hills of Argamae.  They say, even now, Skeats still disappear if they wander too far into the Myst.  Many have been lost over the Yoranium, never to return.  But my story is about some bold Skeats, who did.”
That exploded a story out of me that I wrote by hand, and it was 317 pages by the time I was done with the first book.
But in the classical process of all writers seeking validation, I gave it to 5 people for feedback, and none of them either ever read it, they hated it, or they found it boring. Regardless, I never got feedback on it.
When we feel unsure and insecure, we will attract those that also are on that same wavelength. Their lack of response was enough negativity that I lost confidence even though I read it to my first husband, John, who cried.
So many things got shelved for a bit, and I went back to a Tarot book which was more of a Textbook rather than a creative expression of my heart from my inner child.
Eventually, the Tarot Book was published, and I consistently got feedback from people (especially in Europe) that believed it was the best book out there.
My editor warned me, saying, “You don’t make money on your first book. You don’t make money on your second book. You begin to make money on your third book. And by the fourth book, you begin to gain a voice and a flow that allows others to connect with you on a deeper level.”
What she did not say was that I would lose my shirt on the first two projects.
I was committed to doing the Numerology and Tarot book, and I brought them out with two CD sets, thanks to another muse of mine, Joanna Candler. She also saw and believed in me, and she gave me the courage and confidence to try once again, reach, stretch, and move past my insecurities. Without her, I would have never attempted to do all four projects.
To put this package of 4 products out on Amazon cost me $135,000.00! Yep! You heard right. I did self-publishing because I learned that these subjects in the self-help area don’t really make money, and most publishing houses are unwilling to take the risk.
After doing them, I can see why.
While I am very proud of the books, the world transitioned from paperback books to Kindle, digital books, and audible. While I tried to do it all, within a few years, the CD market was kaput and dead as streaming was happening. So I ended up with boxes of products I could no longer sell.
Then I had my editor read my fantasy book that was the creative explosion from my heart (I called it “The Prophesy of the Morian.”) and she said that in reading it, she saw that I was an unusual writer because most writers are either Fiction, Non-Fiction, or Short-Story writers. Most were only one and often could not do the others. But she could now see the strain in my Non-Fiction that I did not have in my Fiction. She said I was a better fiction writer than a non-fiction writer.
That completely shocked me! I thought everyone who I had given the book to hated it. But I think they never read it because fantasy was not their thing.
I continued to write for my own joy and pleasure to share ideas with all of you without thinking about compensation, financial reward, or whether anyone liked it or not. That freed me up to allow the flow and the writing to evolve.
In doing that, I found my voice in my writing. I found where my passion was and what I wanted to impart. I gave myself free rein to allow what was happening to unfold naturally and allow the thoughts to weave themselves into new forms.
It gave me permission to let the inner poet out. The storyteller found new ways to express ideas and concepts. And my dear friend, a producer, writer, and journalist, gave me the feedback that with all the writing I was doing, I might want to do a project (of sorts). To write something that I found of great interest to me and perhaps others.
That was when I decided to take all of you on my journey; that was my ballet career. It is a fascinating world filled with very real and unusual characters. It was a world that I intimately knew, and it held powerful lessons about life and how the creative processes of dancers lead to the expression of great art. It hopefully has shown that such passions that compel dancers to reach so high are filled with magnificent peak experiences and fraught with terrible hardships and losses.
It is a tale that is as honest and truthful as I could express with the vulnerability of my heart and soul. I am excited to see how this plays out. I am learning valuable lessons about patience and attention to detail. These are all lessons I learned as a dancer but now applied to the art of writing. I am grateful that I am at this time in my life where I am learning to move at a more reasonable pace. I am learning to have patience with myself. I am learning that going slow can be enjoyable and that most things do not need to be rushed.
The youthful exuberance in my soul has become tempered with time and wisdom.
I see the process of learning the art of writing as one of the greatest gifts I have been offered in this life. I am grateful to all of you that have walked this path with me, and I hope that my journey has inspired something magical inside your own being to awaken.
~Suzanne Wagner~