Guest Blog by Kristina Ashley

I was nervous. I write all the time, but this would be a new level for me.  I walked into the classroom for the free Write in the Divine Author Within State that Tom Bird offers where I live in Sedona, Arizona. In one way it felt like coming home. I would be sitting among other hopeful writers and we would all be there opening ourselves to a place within where words flow like an unbridled river. That felt exciting to me. In another way, though, I felt there was a possibility I could fail.

What if I couldn’t get in “the state?”

What if I just wrote a bunch of mind play?

I chose a seat near the front so I could see and hear Tom clearly, in hopes of avoiding any potential failure.

Tom sat down in a very easy-going way and told the class his personal story. He used to have a great job working for a professional baseball team, but he was unhappy. He wanted to write. He had a chat with God one night and his life changed. He was given a technique, a download if you will, of a way to help people write their own books. He quit his successful job and embarked on his journey as an author and writing way-shower.

I was impressed by his commitment to his dream.  My spiritual mentor of 23 years told me early on, “If you want to get something done … go to somebody who is doing it.” It was sage advice that has guided me many times and this was another opportunity to follow it.

So we began. Tom guided us through his technique for getting into the Divine Author Within State. He then asked us a question and instructed us to put our pens to the unlined paper in front of us and write non-stop until he said to put our pens down. Not just non-stop either. No editing, no thinking, no rethinking about what we were writing. I felt a small cloud hover over me with concern about how well I could just write and write non-stop without editing. I am an A-type personality and a Virgo at that. Organization and correction run through me like white blood cells to the rescue during the flu. I was determined, though, to get the full experience out of the class, so I relaxed and listened for the writing prompt.

Tom asked, “What is it that I am meant to write now?”

I started out … “I have no idea.” Well, that was honest. I kept writing, though, and a flow did begin. Book ideas came, things that made me laugh to myself, and even a memory from my teenage years that I had long forgotten, but realized that evening had shut down a part of me as a writer all these years later. This was an important memory because reviewing it somehow opened me up more and healed me.  Then the writing really flowed. When I looked back over what I had written on the blank white papers, I saw something within me that affirmed…

YES! I AM A WRITER!

I walked out of Tom’s class feeling a new sense of creativity and confidence in what does come from within me that I desire to share with the world. And here is an odd thing … I actually wrote on the first page that evening, “Maybe I will write a guest blog for Tom’s newsletter someday. I would feel pretty comfortable doing that, I bet.”

 And here I am … so everything is possible! Keep writing!