When you write a book, I always tell my Haven Writing Retreat clients, know that it’s going to take a lot of drafts.
So for the first one…the MIRACULOUS first draft, think of it like a game of Jenga. Stack up all the blocks. Later you can come back and take out blocks and see if it still stands. By doing this, you create windows, an interesting sculpture, and sometimes that sculpture teeters. As long as it stands. You get to decide what that means and what “blocks” to pull. Just like life.
Sometimes a writer decides to take out “blocks” in the eleventh hour. Maybe it’s a section that you’ve thought was holding the book together when really it was just extra stuff that you’re afraid to let go of for myriad reasons. I usually find that I keep those “blocks” in there to the bitter end, usually against my better intuition, and here’s why: I don’t trust the book yet. It doesn’t have readers so I don’t know how it lands for others, and I’ve lost my subjectivity. I can’t see it any longer so I’m trying to give it too much fortification. Like sending my kid off to camp with too many pairs of socks. I have learned that in the eleventh hour I have to trust the book. Which means I have to have the guts to take out those un-trusting “blocks” and see if in the very very end…the book stands. It always does.
It’s a risk. But isn’t anything that’s worth creating?
I want to share one of my last “blocks” with you—the original very last few pages of my new release The Wild Why: Stories and Teachings to Uncover Your Wonder. I want to share it with you because there is treasure there. When Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and later Faulkner and Stephen King said, “kill your darlings” it wasn’t that they were saying that the darlings are bad. They might still be darlings. Just misplaced darlings. So I pulled that last chapter. It was basically a summation of the book’s main points. Dangerously close to a list of bullet points, and I don’t like bullet points. I like stories. I like activating the reader’s imagination. I feel like that’s a writer’s job, and I feel like that’s what a reader will remember. Stories, not bullet points. I’d only done this summation of sorts because I felt beholden to the teaching component of the book. It went against my intuition. So I pulled the “block.”
The books stood/stands. At least I believe it does. And instead, I wrote a new section which wasn’t a summation of what I hoped the reader had learned by reading the book. But instead…an invitation to step into your wonder in a much more playful, story-forward, way…hoping that the reader will say yes to it. It’s called The Wonder Cabin. If you’ve read The Wild Why, hopefully you loved that chapter and its invitation.
In fact, I often read The Wonder Cabin for my own personal wonderment. I’m so glad that it’s how my book ends. I wouldn’t have written it if I had clung to what I felt I was supposed to do at the end of a teaching memoir. To end in the teaching. I’m so glad that I instead ended it with wonder. I trusted the book.
So much of life is about trusting or not trusting what we have created in all aspects of living.
Things, people, relationships, the way we express ourselves. What would happen if we trusted what we create? Would we, and it, finally fall down? I don’t think so. And if we do…what then? Do we stay there? I hope not. I hope we build something new. Better. Stronger.
So here is the “lost” last chapter.
It’s full of wonder-full points. But life isn’t about talking points. It’s about living. Living in wonder, I hope. It’s not that this chapter isn’t good. It’s just that in the end, it belongs elsewhere. So here is that elsewhere. I hope what follows is of some use to you. Perhaps it will even inspire you to get your hands on The Wild Why…and experience its way of helping you uncover your wonder. In this worried world, we need it. Here goes…
Your Wonder Is Calling…
Hopefully by now you are tuned into:
What wonder is and what the world would be without it.
What wonder is and what you would be without it.
Why wonder is essential to our well-being and society’s well-being.
Perhaps this book has made you aware of your wild whys.
Your wonder wound.
What has challenged your wonder, or even tried to kill it.
Maybe during the reading of this book you realized that there is a black hole in your self-expression, sucking your voice out of you and into it. Maybe you feel like you can’t get it back.
That is simply not true. Your wonder is within you. If it’s lying there untended, even if it’s dying, you can resuscitate it. You can bring it back to life!
What (almost) kills wonder?
Broad strokes:
Fear.
Loss.
Grief.
Shame.
Rejection.
Shutting down our curiosity and awe as a result.
Shutting down our empathy as a result.
Shutting down our imaginations as a result.
Shutting down our intuition as a result.
Shutting down living with our hearts as our guides.
Living in our false power vs. our true power.
Being over-identified by something outside of us.
Rejecting the supreme power of forgiveness.
Being at war with ourselves vs. practicing loving-kindness toward ourselves.
How does that manifest?
Personal myths that we buy into:
— I’m stuck.
— I don’t have a voice.
— I’m too sensitive.
— I cry too easily.
— I talk too much.
— I’m not creative.
— I’m too much.
— What I have to say doesn’t matter.
— Somebody already said it better than I ever could.
— I don’t have an original thought.
And when we believe in these personal myths, how do we allow them to take us down?
· Learning to say no more than yes.
· Letting other people’s should and shouldn’ts run us.
· Authority figures crushing our voice/feelings. (As they too were likely crushed…)
· Learning to stomp out our voice/feelings as a result.
· Choosing to live with walls around us.
· Letting pain drive our choices, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
· Focusing on the future or the past instead of the present moment.
· Focusing on results instead of possibility.
· Buying into the “slog” of life. (That life is hard and we have to brace against it and even fight in order to succeed.)
· Ambition addiction.
· Believing in the success/failure myth.
· Believing that money brings us happiness.
· Giving away our true power. Masking ourselves in false power.
· Telling ourselves: “I can’t love myself. I shouldn’t love myself. I don’t know how to love myself.”
· Telling ourselves: “I don’t know how to be kind to myself.”
· Being afraid to say yes to profound love.
· Underrating the power of forgiveness.
· And to me, this is the biggest one of all: Abandonment of our intuition.
· Add to this list in your journal: What are my own personal wonder-kills
If you’ve been doing the Your Wild Why prompts throughout, put them all together and read them in one sitting. It will read like its own sort of book. Like a wonder “movie” of your life. See if your story as a whole gives you new insights. See what kind of energy your story holds when all under one roof. Perhaps you have a memoir on your hands…
So, what are you going to do now? I’m asking myself the same question. What are we going to do with all of this knowledge and awareness? Are we going to build that bridge to ourselves, and then to others? Or are we going to hide behind our fortress walls, drawbridge up, terrifying monsters keeping everyone out?
With this book, I’m taking a chance at building that bridge—to you, and to my self-expression. I believe in the words and messages and stories within this book, and I hope they land in your heart. But if they don’t, I know at least I am better for this exploration of wonder. And there’s the bridge to self (and to self-kindness) that is crucial in the field of creative self-expression.
Don’t worry about what other people think. Get to know yourself in the truth and wonder of what you think. Wonder is a gamble, but should that make us cower before it, or climb into it playfully? Can we play instead of cower? Can we play, right now, in this moment, and stop worrying about the future?
Go back to twirling your little, playful, wonder-full Free Child. Scoop her up in her arms. Let her little legs dangle in the sunny meadow. Join her as she dips her head back and squeals with the raw joy of possibility. She is your wonder.
In writing this book, I’ve come to realize that the Inner Champion, the kind voice, is really the little, wonder-full Free Child, hiding and playing in the trees, leaves, forts, asking all of her wild whys and making it safe for herself…all grown up. She never lost her wonder. She’s been holding it all along the way. Waiting. Believing. And now, receiving.
Ask her your wild whys. She won’t require an answer. Just the question is enough.
Fin
My new release: The Wild Why: Stories and Teachings to Uncover Your Wonder launched on April 8, 2025. I went on a six week cross country book tour and had the true pleasure of reading from it, doing Q&A’s (and wow were people hungry to ask questions about how to uncover their wonder), seeing so many alums of my Haven Writing Retreats in Montana, leading The Wild Why workshops, being in conversation with wonder-full writers, speaking in iconic bookstores, museums, and other wonder-full venues, meeting readers, and making new friends. I loved it so much. Thank you to all who met me out there on the road.
Haven Writing Retreats:
I still have spots on all three of my fall Haven Writing Retreats in glorious NW Montana! You don’t have to be a writer to come. Just a word wanderer. And if you are a writer…I have a place for you to finally feel safe…and to move your pen into your writing dreams.
Go here to learn more and to set up an intro call.
September 3 – 7, 2025 – one spot left
October 15 – 19, 2025 – one spot left
October 29 – November 2, 2025 – still room
