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Inspired Writing and Publishing

Rose Rosetree taps into Higher Power to create Inspirational Bestsellers

by Jim Barnes

One of the largest and fastest-growing categories in this website’s Independent Publisher Book Awards is Inspirational/Spiritual. Authors who've been through spiritual awakenings, battles with diseases and other life-changing experiences often turn their inspiration into books – with mixed results. Writing and publishing a book that will inspire others to find more peace and happiness in their lives is certainly a noble cause. Trouble is, one person's inspiration doesn't always translate to a universal audience. How can an author be sure their message gets across to readers? How do writers get "inspired" enough to write truly inspirational books?

Author Rose Rosetree has inspired thousands with her seven published books, numerous articles and workshops on the topics of Face Reading, Aura Reading, and Skills for Empaths and Deeper Perception. We spoke to her about writing with inspiration – and staying inspired during the sometimes difficult times an independent author/publisher goes through.

IP: Which resources are available to a writer who would like to have more inspiration?

RR: Inspiration, of one sort or another, lies at the choice to be a writer in the first place. Otherwise, why pick such a crazy profession? We writers and other artists are fortunate because somehow we’re connected to inspiration. That’s why we’re willing to make the sacrifices required to show others our distinctive work.

Writing isn’t a job like plumbing, useful though that is, too. Our stock in trade isn’t material, like pipes and faucets. We sell something inner, contagious “A-ha!” experiences.

Sure, we writers also have our equivalent of plumbers’ skills. Someone who’s serious about writing enters into a lifetime apprenticeship program, learning everything possible about writing technique. That way the inspired connection stays alive and generates words that sing on the page. Yet, three inner problems can limit the degree to which inspiration flows through us:

Writer’s Problem #1 is bringing inspiration all the way out to the page and beyond, a.k.a. “writer’s block.” But two related flow problems may be more important to writers, although I’ve never seen either one addressed directly in print.

Writer’s Problem #2 is how to stay inspired while bringing your book out into the world and dealing with those well-known slings and arrows.

By far the most intriguing and important of this trio is Writer’s Problem #3. How can you do justice to your inspiration?

Grade schoolers write “poems” that are variations on “Roses are red, violets are blue.” To the Valentine sender, the underlying inspiration rings clear and true (and maybe even blue). To an outsider, alas, the words may clunk with the familiar thud of any cliché.

And isn’t that the worst nightmare of any professional writer? After translating your soulful experiences into words, they sound hollow, the literary equivalent of worn out clothes from a thrift shop.

For me, deeper perception brings a solution. In Let Today Be a Holiday I offer practical techniques for appreciating life at deeper levels, and doing it in such a way as to help the co-creator come down to earth gently. Any writer can become accustomed to thinking, feeling and questioning way beneath the surface of life. And the words that result will leave clichés in the dust.

What do you mean by “Deeper Perception?”

Everyday life contains deeper versions of experience. They’re tucked into life so neatly that, unless you purposely pay attention, you’ll miss the whole show. Think of those Advent pictures given to kids. On the surface, there’s a colorful picture of Santa or maybe some sacred scene. Looking more closely, the child finds the picture’s hidden doorways. By tradition, one of those hidden doors is opened daily. Then out pops a piece of candy.

For grownups, I offer a version in the form of a daybook. Instead of candy there are techniques that can be enjoyed again and again. Whether a writer uses my techniques or comes up with others, here’s what matters most for anyone who wishes to overcome Writer’s Problem #3. Find a dependable way to travel at will to deeper levels of everyday life. Nothing can change a writer’s work more.

In the days of Hemingway, the technique was simple. The writer would go get drunk. I favor an approach that won’t wreck your nervous system but will fine-tune it instead. How did you, personally, discover the role of inspiration as a writer?

Inspiration found me at age ten. I still remember walking to my Girl Scout meeting one rainy fall evening. Out of nowhere in particular, I felt an indescribable joy. My instinctive reaction was to try to describe it, which made the joy feel stronger. Somehow I found a pen, some paper. I stood there, ecstatic and dripping, writing down words the best that I could. Some words anyway… Some souvenir…

Luckily for me, the feeling of inspiration lingered, more important to me than either my words or anyone else’s reaction to them. So it didn’t matter that my words at the time were, literally, a soggy mess.

I’d been initiated. Ever since, writing has been my favorite activity in life. (Yes, that includes sex. Unlike Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City,” I would rather write than make love.)

During high school, like a lovesick teenager who keeps waiting for that important phone call, I lived for the moments when I’d feel inspired enough to write. But until I solved Writer’s Problem #1, it wasn’t enough that I had a topic and someone to write for—I couldn’t start a thing. Until my last semester of college, the writer’s block grew more and more acute.

As an English major at Brandeis, I had to write loads of papers. After agonizing, I’d turn in something that would be returned with a low grade and comments like, “Your ideas might have been interesting if only you had managed to express them.” By that last semester of college, the only A on my transcript was for a course in “Nonverbal Communication.”

You've taught classes in overcoming writer's block. What is the most important thing you've learned?

Any writer can learn to actively co-create with a source of inspiration. The simplest way to explain this process is to put it in terms of my new book, whose subtitle is 365 Ways to Co-Create with God. Many blocked writers are really inspired writers-in-waiting. At least once, we have connected with a true source of inspiration, be it God or muse or some other place deep within. The problem becomes how to have lightning strike us again (or in my case, as you may remember, how to receive a soft autumn drizzle).

Ironically, Writer’s Problem #1 may happen most to the writers who have the most to offer. They don’t only dream of, some day, being inspired. They have known the experience. So they ache when that inspiration doesn’t come back.

Yet it can. On demand. For anyone. The secret is to use techniques that connect a person up.

Developing the 500+ techniques in my book about co-creation means that I won't rubber stamp a pat solution onto each aspiring writer. Save that one-size-fits-all treatment for the many rejection letters that each of us has received! My approach honors the uniqueness of each individual.

What's the quick, practical summary? I suppose it would be to stop being passive, waiting for what we're "supposed to" write, hoping that we will be worthy to receive more of the good stuff. Any writer can team up actively with a source of inspiration. I'm one resource for learning how, but there are countless others. And fortunately, all any writer needs is one.

How would you define co-creating?

Let’s be bold and use the G word. I recommend co-creating with God. So the first, super-important part of this definition involves God.

Okay, God’s precise definition I leave to each person reading this interview. Being results-oriented in Let Today Be a Holiday, however, I’ll advise anyone reading this interview to avoid depending on some puny, vague, wispy, wistful dream. With all respect to everyone involved, I challenge you to define God as someone or something real. Find a way to experience God as if this counted at least as much as having a good poop. Too many lovers of God are walking around spiritually constipated.

Next, co-creating with God involves taking an active role, both asking, instigating and receiving. For the last 36 years, I’ve served as a teacher of personal development. Consistently I’ve found that, soon as the topic involves God, people turn uncharacteristically passive. This applies equally to people who worship officially on a regular basis and folks in what I call “disorganized religion.”

Within the terms of your very personal belief system, could there be an invitation to grow up? Each of us is God’s beloved child, and always will be. Another certainty is that this special relationship is the great love story in life. But what will a person make of it? Through considerable struggle, I’ve discovered that we can evolve to the point of relating to God as a grownup, rather than a supplicating child.

Me standing out in the rain, soaking up every drop of inspiration. There’s beauty in that. But there’s just as much beauty (and surrender) in setting things up so that, whenever I choose to write, whatever the occasion, words flow and joy sparkles all around. That, incidentally, would be a working definition of writing as co-creation.

How can co-creation help you to connect better with your audience?

Everyone co-creates with someone or something. It could be the writer’s pain or fears or some irrelevant desire for fame. By choosing to connect to one’s Higher Power, a transpersonal wisdom develops beyond what the writer personally knows. For many of us, this is one of the great highs about writing, period.

The other piece to co-creating with God, as explored in my latest book, helps to solve Problem #3. How can you do justice to your inspiration? Deeper perception helps a writer to avoid clichés.

Here’s an example of what happens with this kind of co-creation. Yesterday I received an email from a journalist who interviewed me for ELLE Canada. My assignment had been to read faces of 10 prominent Canadians, focusing on how personal power showed in cheeks, ears, and the like.

This journalist asked, “Just out of curiosity, how many of these women did you already know about before you started reading their faces? The reason I ask is that your assessments seem to jibe exactly with everything I've heard or read about them.”

The answer was that I knew nothing whatsoever about any of these women. The comments I’d made resulted from co-creating in the moment, checking out their photos.

Both techniques for deeper perception and writing along with the highest Source available will increase the truth value of any writer’s words.

What are the keys to getting your books noticed and reviewed?

Noticed, thank God, is different from reviewed. America’s book reviews are now locked up so tight that they’re nearly impenetrable. Readers of this magazine may already know that, for self-publishers, the door is closed to Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and every major newspaper in the country. So are book signings in the big chains (not to mention having one’s books stocked there).

Even America’s independent booksellers, whose future may depend on emphasizing independently published books, now rely on bestseller lists from major newspapers—which are completely closed to self-publishers and most smaller independent presses. Recently for (what I thought would be) fun, I checked out the bestseller’s list from BookSense.

What did I find for my field of mind-body-spirit? Out of the top 25 bestsellers, 11 came from the same conglomerates that more-or-less own the chain bookstores; 12 came from America’s biggest independent presses (one step below the conglomerates); two came from smaller independent presses and zero were -- like my books -- self-published.

However, my work and books have been the subject of media interviews, 670 so far, and counting. My work has been praised in publications as different as The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Los Angeles Times and The Catholic Standard. TV, when I’ve managed to find myself there, has treated me even better. My two segments on “The View” became the top-rated interview for the whole week. The same thing happened for ABC news in Cincinnati, so the following year I taped seven interviews which aired during Sweeps Week.

These statistics will, I hope, inspire anyone who reads them. Those of us who publish independently really believe in our work. We have something new to offer. In fact, we may be forced to publish because the big conglomerates are so profit-oriented, they won’t risk enough on work that’s authentically new.

If you write what you know about, stay true to your inspiration, and keep inviting the world to take notice, eventually your readers will find you. Neither any publishing executive nor any agent (and I’ve had 27 failed ones, at least) nor anyone else on earth has the power to close the door to your success.

How did it feel to get two books selected by One Spirit? What was the process like?

I submitted each book with a letter and some newspaper clips. The elegant process was called waiting.

This major book club wasn’t just nice to me, personally. One Spirit was smart — in ways I didn’t appreciate until years later. Here’s what I mean:

Aura Reading Through All Your Senses, my first book to be accepted, had a two-color cover. The Power of Face Reading, their next choice from me, had another two-color cover (a really ugly one). The Club overlooked my low-budget covers, non-existent advertising budget, and complete lack of clout. They actually read my books.

Besides being willing to probe over-the-transom type submissions, the Club was also smart about positioning itself. Why would anyone buy New Age books through a club when they’re already in bookstores? One Spirit realized that most of the best titles aren’t in the chain bookstores. If book reviewers and independent bookstores understood this, they’d select their books differently.

So I’ll forever be grateful to One Spirit editors for continuing to respect writers and seek out the real innovators. I consider One Spirit to be the biggest, most courageous voice in our country’s publishing establishment.

When they say, “Now read this,” unlike reviewers or booksellers, editors of this Club are risking their own money by signing on authors like me. In my case, they made back their investment and more. It’s simply good business to do this, and when America’s reviewing establishment and bookstores follow One Spirit’s lead, every niche within publishing will become more vibrant.

Have you had any other “special sales” successes?

So far, foreign rights have been far more lucrative than the revenues from One Spirit.

Aura Reading Through All Your Senses became a national bestseller in Germany last year (unusual for a translated book); The Power of Face Reading is now translated into Spanish, Lithuanian, German, and another English printing sold all over India.

But my biggest groundswell of enthusiasm is coming for Empowered by Empathy, the first book written for all types of empaths; it’s leading-edge stuff with the typical Rosetree assortment of practical techniques. One Spirit didn’t choose that title, but it’s selling so fast that yesterday, I sent out for its third reprint, and the first Japanese edition is being published later this year.

Last night I double-checked on the website for London’s prestigious Inner Potential Centre, where in May I’ll giving a one-day course based on this book. Did they remember to include me? Well, yes. They put me right at the top of their website, with my picture on the front of their quarterly catalog. So at age 57, I’m making my debut as a cover girl!

As for the new baby, Let Today Be a Holiday, that’s going to have its own life, too. Will One Spirit come courting? Someone will, I know, because the flow of inspiration has been clear through every phase of writing and publishing. And inspiration attracts.

* * * * *

Rose Rosetree holds a B.A. from Brandeis University, supplemented by graduate study in social work and education. She is known nationally as a Face Reader, Aura Reader and Empath, and has won teaching awards for her workshops from FIRST CLASS Adult Education Center. Find out more about her at www.rose-rosetree.com. Her latest release:

Let Today be a Holiday:365 Ways to Co-Create with God
by Rose Rosetree
ISBN 0-9752538-0-8
372 pages
List Price $18.95

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