1. There are no rules.
This is the one rule that never changes. No matter what you’re writing or revising, the only unqualified certainties are that flow is fluid, your creation is unique and your book writes its own rules. Truly, there is no universal right or wrong way. There is only your way, the way of your book.

2. There’s a difference between a good idea and the right idea.
Be open to the right idea for your book. Be open to the idea that not only sings to your soul but sings the song of your soul to the world. Be open to the idea that expresses your passion, the right idea that is uniquely yours.

3. Forget everything you’ve ever learned about writing.
Forget your grade school teacher who was a stickler for spelling and grammar. Forget your high school teacher who forced you to turn in an outline with your essay. Forget your college professor who forced you to write a certain way. Forget all the classmates or instructors who cruelly critiqued or ridiculed you. Forget all the writing manuals and instruction you’ve ever read (including, where appropriate, this one).

4. Remember everything you ever knew about spirituality.
Be in the moment with each word, each page, each project. Set your will aside and surrender to the guiding voice of your Muse. Take neither praise nor criticism too seriously and hold your center as a writer and creator, regardless of what others say or suggest.

5. Always use your discernment.
You know at a deep level what’s right and what’s wrong — with your writing, with your ideas, with your book. Trust that inner knowingness. Trust your heart. Trust your Muse. Trust your book.

6. Your book is smarter than you are.
Discard all assumptions that you know what your book is about, how it will end or how you will get to the end. Your book knows what it’s about. Don’t force your will onto it. Talk to it. Sit in the silence with it. Listen to it. Follow its lead.

6a. Your book is a trickster.
Your book may trick you into writing and discovering the unexpected, undesired, unwanted. This is good. Your book and your Muse see the higher perspective that you, sitting at your blank page or screen, cannot always see. Curse, mutter and resist if you must. Then surrender to your book’s higher wisdom. It is smarter than you are.

7. Your book is older than you think.
Your book has been around a long time waiting for you to notice it, acknowledge it and muster up the courage to surrender to it. Your job is to do all those things and, in so doing, make manifest what has always existed. Your job is to allow the ideas of your heart to find expression through your mind. Your job is to let creation happen.

8. You can make it easy or make it tough. Why make it tough?
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the thought of 300 blank pages waiting to be filled. It’s easy to let the size and scope of a project paralyze you into inaction. Even as you hold a vision of the completed whole (see Awakening Your Vision, Chapter 11), break your book and its related tasks into manageable chunks. Create goals that are so easily achievable they’re impossible not to meet. If that means saying you’ll pen fifty words per writing session, that’s fine. Set the goal and meet it. It’s important to build up a sense of the possible, to reassure yourself that your book is doable. As you meet your early goals, begin to stretch them and yourself, always keeping them clearly attainable. Celebrate every accomplishment and achievement, however tiny. Avoid setting yourself up for failure. Each success will breed more confidence, each confidence, more success. And before you know it, your book will be done.

9. Write.
All it takes to write a book is to start, surrendering to one word after the next until you’re done. (There’s a reason why the word surrender appears seventy-nine times in this book!) Many books and teachers insist that you know what you’re writing about before you start. I say, just start. Your book knows the way. Let it guide you. Remember, no book can be birthed unless you first face a blank page or screen.