10 Great Reasons You Should Contribute to C2C’s eBook Fundraiser

Last week I launched C2C’s first-ever eBook fundraising campaign.

The campaign was launched to help me raise money to create an eBook inspired by this blog, Courage 2 Create.

The money raised from this campaign will be used to help me hire a professional editor and graphic designer who will then help me create the eBook.

(Read the post where I first introduced the eBook fundraising campaign by going here.)

After the campaign was launched, dozens of you responded, and, so far, we’ve managed to raise over $200 dollars! Wohoo! Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far!

But the fundraiser isn’t over yet, and we’re still far from our goal of $2,000. And if we don’t reach this goal by February 9, 2012, I won’t be able to get this eBook made.

So, I’d like to take some time today to convince you why you should contribute to the campaign, before time runs out.

Here I go.

3 Ways Jealousy Isn’t Serving You (And 3 Ways To Make It Serve You)

Now, much is said of jealousy, but rarely do I hear about how jealousy actually feels in our bodies. It’s a very unpleasant and awkward emotion, and it sort of shocks us when it first crops up.

I don’t think anyone wants to stay feeling jealous for very long:  it aches and it tears in all the wrong places. But just like all the other emotions we tend to feel, jealousy is simply another note on the spectrum of human emotion we can’t avoid feeling.

So, how do we deal with jealousy? Well, whenever I experience jealousy cropping up in me (when I see someone succeeding in their writing career in the way I wish to succeed), I try to acknowledge the ways in which this jealously is not serving me. I examine what jealousy is doing to me, and notice the ways in which jealousy is tricking me into believing its nasty lies:

How Jealousy Isn’t Serving You

1. Jealousy Gives You A False Comparison

When I get jealous of someone, I usually notice that this pang of jealousy carries with it a deep sense of unfairness.

Frequently Asked Questions

Well, folks, it’s been almost two years since I arrived on the blogging scene, and even though I’ve received a wide range of questions over the years, I’ve noticed that there are some questions that tend to come up more than most. So, today, I thought I’d take a moment to address some of the more common questions my readers have about me and my blog. Enjoy.

“What’s the story behind your pen name?”

Ollin is an Aztec symbol that means “movement” and “change.” Ollin is written with two “l” ‘s, not one, and it’s pronounced “O-leen.” Please don’t call me Ollie, Oly, Olly, or Olé. Not a fan of those nicknames. Sorry. Thanks!

“Why do you use a pen name?”

I went with a pen name because I felt that my real name was way too common.

How to Defy Gravity

“The closer he got to the realization of his dream, the more difficult things became.”

    – from The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

As I come close to the end of my second year working on my novel, I’ve come to notice something pretty shocking about the entire process. Logically, you would think that the longer one endeavors to make a dream a reality, the easier this endeavor becomes.

But I’m finding that this isn’t true. In fact, I’m finding that the complete opposite is true: the more you work to make your dreams a reality–the harder it gets. It’s as if, in pursuing one’s passion, in answering one’s calling, you set off a switch in the universe. That switch sets of an alarm that sends a vibration through the world and alerts some mysterious force. This mysterious force then rushes over to wherever you are located in the world, and then begins to work on you, pressing down on you, harder than all the rest.

Help Make C2C’s First eBook A Reality!

On Monday, I said I would be announcing an exciting new project today. Well, today is finally here, and I’m ready to make the announcement.

But first, I want to say that in February 2010, when I started this blog, my only hope was that it would encourage me to write my first novel. But I had no idea that in less than two years this blog would grow to become more influential than I had ever imagined. The blog has touched lives all over the world, and has inspired hundreds of people to not only create great art, but to live great lives.

My Top Secret Project Revealed

And now, today, I’m happy to announce that my new project will be…

You Are Exactly Where You Need To Be

Editor’s Note: this is a guest post by a Kathryn Trombly from Just Daily Living.

Sometimes the most difficult thing to do in life, is to live exactly where you are, and as who you are today.

Growing up no one teaches you how to do that–to just live.

No one teaches you how find and hold onto that delicate balance between your writing, spending time with your family and friends, making a career transition, or taking care of your self and health.

No one teaches you how to change your life and grow your self, while having to juggle all the other daily responsibilities.

Each morning you wake up constantly caught between the person you once were, and the one you are becoming; between the life you once lived and the one you are creating.

Just like your writing, some days are effortless, flowing smoothly and serenely. You’re confident, excited, happy and filled with faith that you know exactly where you’re headed.

But then there are those days when everything seems to stop. You’re writing is fragmented, and the words just torn from your being. You’re frustrated, exhausted, afraid and doubt everything you thought you knew.

You’re left to wonder if it’s possible to ever find some peace in that space between yesterday and tomorrow.

Why Skipping A Step Is Not The Same As Mastering It

Recently, I came upon a new word: “pseudo-forgiveness.”

Pseudo-forgiveness is the act of forgiving someone before you have experienced the long string of complicated and painful emotions one MUST feel before one is ready, and capable, of bestowing true forgiveness on someone else. Basically, pseudo-forgiveness is “pretend forgivness” posing as real forgiveness.

I spoke of forgiveness before on this blog, in an article entitled 6 Ways to Regain A Sense of Power. In this article, I said that forgiveness was an important step in regaining a sense of power, and that’s true.

But now I realize that I had not truly forgiven the person I had said I had forgiven in that article. I had only “pseudo-forgiven” them.

You see, at the time, I had forgiven this person because I knew, intellectually, that forgiveness was a part of the process of letting go and moving on. But little did I know that I had skipped an important step. Little did I know that in rushing straight to forgiveness, without allowing myself to experience the full range of complicated, painful emotions I had to experience in order to truly forgive this person, I had not really learned my lesson.

Now I know that forgiveness is far more complicated than just saying: “I forgive you.” Now I know that you have to mean forgiveness–all the way down to the very core of your being–for forgiveness to be true.

What Stillness Reveals

Editor’s note: the original version of this article was first published on the C2C in 2010.

When I finished the first draft of my novel, my first impulse was to dive right into revision. I had been on a roll for months and thought: “Hey? Why stop? I’ll just keep writing!”

But I couldn’t get myself to do it. I started to push myself harder, and keep writing, but then I caught myself. I was doing it again. I was demanding more than the situation called for. I wanted to fill in the empty space, before the empty space made itself known. You know what empty space I’m talking about, right? The empty space that comes between the end of one phase, and the beginning of another? That empty space.

I didn’t want to dwell in that empty space, so I tried to force my writing. But it was no use. I couldn’t move forward, no matter how hard I tried. So I let go. I let the novel go and now I’m dwelling in that empty space.

I’m starting to realize that my habit of trying desperately to fill in the empty spaces of life was learned from growing up in a culture that demands that its members fill in EVERY empty space in life.

For instance, if we are not busy talking to someone, we’re texting. If we’re not texting, we’re twittering. If we’re not twittering, we’re facebooking. If we’re not facebooking we’re watching TV, or listening to music, or surfing the web, or watching YouTube, or working, or exercising, or reading and if we’re not doing any of those, we try to frantically search for the next thing to do that will fill in the empty space in between one thing and the next.

We are desperate to fill in every silence, every piece of stillness, with something–something we deem more desirable, more worthy than that stillness. Something we think is more important and urgent than that damning quiet underneath everything–that damning quiet that always exists. That quiet that starts to drives us crazy when we first notice it, in those brief moments when we accidentally drop our guard, and all the clamor we worked so hard to create dies down.

It’s as if we are afraid that the empty space in between things is so large and so vast that it might swallow us up. Sallow us up into what, we don’t know, because we’ve already filled in the empty space we would have needed to think of an answer to that very question.

What To Do When You Don’t Have A Clue Where To Go Next

Editor’s Note: the original version of this article was first posted on the C2C in 2010.

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”

- Rosalia de Castro

The first couple of steps towards a goal is the hardest.

I wonder if every new day is just that, a new step. Never an old, tired one. We wake up, and the window’s wiped clean, and in comes a sun we had never seen before. There are new possibilities, several different ways in which things could end up, you never really know where you are going, but you do have an idea of where you would like to end up.

Not Knowing Where I Am Going In My Writing

When I write, I often let the journey happen first. I let it all spill out, in its raw form. From beginning to end. This may be different from other authors, but I like the journey, the not knowing what’s going to happen as I travel down the path. At this point I am only a reader, a watcher, an observer of the events as they unfold. I don’t take many notes at first, I just let the birth of a new river take shape, let the water cut through the sand and anchor itself deep within the earth.

Not everything comes at once, but enough does. Enough to have a good idea of where the story needs to go, of what I need to do to return and flesh out a character, create a motive–how I might have to set up certain plot shifts.

But the initial tale is set, and sometimes you feel like you are the first explorer of a brave new world. What you discover, and the wonders that you find, you have to keep secret and closed to those around you, because you can’t possibly describe it all in one sitting. You don’t want to. You need time to perfect its telling. It’s a good story, you know, but you have to be able to tell it well. Why? Because you are the only who has made that journey, the only one who has a key to that magical world, where everything is so different, exciting and new.

Where To Begin Your Story

Editor’s Note: the original version of this article was first posted on the C2C in 2010.

A puzzling question for many authors, like myself, is this one:  Where do I begin my story?

Do I begin in the middle of the action? Do I begin with the backstory of the setting and characters? Or do I begin, unconventionally, at the end, and then proceed to explain everything that lead to this end?

Beginnings are important and that’s why authors are always anxious about them. Why? Because we know that beginnings are only a set up. A set up for the end.

As I approach the climax of my novel’s first draft, I am reminded of my beginning. I have to remember where I started, what I set up, so that I could follow through with it, so I can tie up all the loose ends, so I can make sense of what I foreshadowed, so I can think about creating closure for my characters, or lack thereof. Like two ends of the same string, the beginning and the end must be tied together, into a knot, in order to finally make a complete circle.

At this point the question no longer is “Where do I begin my story,” but rather, “Where did I begin my story?”  So…

Where did I begin my story?

That is when I began to wonder (as you have noticed I tend to do): a string of events might sum up a character in novel, but does it really sum up a person–a real live person?