Diana Raab - Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life

Praise for Diana Raabs
WRITING FOR BLISS

Buy this book for someone you loveand maybe that is you. It gives us both inspiration and practical steps for opening our deepest selves into writinghelping us heal our wounds while moving us, almost miraculously, toward the life we are meant to live.

JAY DUFRECHOU, PhD, author of Moving through Grief, Reconnecting with Nature

In Writing for Bliss, Diana Raab reminds us to begin every page with an open mind, a curious heart, and fresh eyes. The prompts are thoughtful, stimulating, and a valuable resource for any writers mental health and spiritual growth.

DINTY W. MOORE, author of The Mindful Writer

Uniquely blending inspiring insights with practical advice, Diana guides you on a path to discover the story that is truly inside youand yearning to be told.

PATRICK SWEENEY, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Succeed on Your Own Terms

I cannot write fiction without dredging the depth of my psyche, or else the writing isnt true. Writing for Bliss validates my experience as an author. Whether you are a beginning writer or an established veteran, I encourage you to read it, study it, devour it.

STEPHEN JAY SCHWARTZ, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of Boulevard

Raab gives you powerful tools to untie your knots, open your heart, and find more happiness. This wonderful book is for everyone; beginning and seasoned writers alike will be inspired to write with more authenticity, joy, and truth.

JULIE GOHMAN, PhD, author of 10 Sacred Questions for Every Woman and 10 Sacred Questions for Every Mother

Writing for Bliss brings to an aspiring author everything necessary to accomplish a finished book. Raabs detailed instruction includes her own journey from journaling in childhood to completing published works. She shares a look into her warrior self and how to use prompts to write from an inner point of view, the transpersonal self.

BARBARA SINOR, PhD, author of seven books, including Finding Destiny and The Pact: Messages from the Other Side

Diana Raabs life, philosophy and academic preparation combine in this volume to guide readers into understanding themselves and the writing process. Her words will guide you to your own discoveries, both spiritual and practical and allow bliss to become a significant aspect of your life. As a sister survivor of cancer at City of Hope, our lives, our teachings and our writings are forever entwined.

JULIE DAVEY, Author of Writing for Wellness: A Prescription for Healing

Diana Raabs promise of bliss is no exaggeration. Take her wisdom. Follow her advice. They indeed lead to success no matter the creative bonnet you may have donned today. And, yes. Bliss.

CAROLYN HOWARD-JOHNSON, poet, fiction writer, and book marketer.

WRITING FOR BLISS

A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life

Diana Raab, PhD

Foreword by Mark Freeman, PhD

Loving Healing Press

Ann Arbor

Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life.

Copyright 2017 by Diana Raab, PhD. All Rights Reserved.

Foreword by Mark Freeman, PhD.

For a complete list of permissions used, see p. 208

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Raab, Diana, 1954- author.

Title: Writing for bliss : a seven-step plan for telling your story and transforming your life / Diana Raab.

Description: Ann Arbor : Loving Healing Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016049225 (print) | LCCN 2017011052 (ebook) | ISBN9781615993253 (ePub, PDF, Kindle) | ISBN 9781615993239 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781615993246 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Autobiography--Authorship. | Biography as a literary form.

Classification: LCC CT25 (ebook) | LCC CT25 .R33 2017 (print) | DDC 808.06/692--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049225

Published by

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

www.LHPress.com

Tollfree 888-761-6268

Distributed by Ingram Book Group (USA/CAN), Bertrams Books (UK /EU)

Table of Writing Prompts

Also by Diana Raab

MEMOIR

Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant: Overcoming Infertility and Managing Your High-Risk Pregnancy

Your High Risk Pregnancy

Reginas Closet: Finding My Grandmothers Secret Journal

Healing with Words: A Writers Cancer Journal

POETRY

My Muse Undresses Me (Chapbook)

Dear Anas: My Life in Poems for You

The Guilt Gene

Listening to Africa

Lust

ANTHOLOGIES

Writers and Their Notebooks

Writers on the Edge: 22 Writers Speak about Addiction and Dependency (edited with James Brown)

To my father, Edward Marquise, who taught me the power of hope and positive thinking, and to my mother, Eva Klein Marquise, for giving me my first journal, which laid the foundation for my life as a writer

Oh, the joy of writing, a joy so intense

so pure, so all-absorbing and free and all

encompassing, flooding the soul in mystical

ecstasy, elevating and sanctifying, infusing

beauty in the humblest subjects and a purpose

in the most wayward life.

Anas Nin (Volume Two, pg. 8)

Foreword

Diana Raabs Writing for Bliss is so many things: a meditation on, and paean to, writing and the writing life; a reflective and deeply felt guide for those wishing to speak their minds and hearts, whether silently or aloud; and, not least, a valuable how-to book, the how-to in question being less about this or that writing technique or strategy and more about life and what we might do to live it more fully and with more sense of its great abundance. Perhaps more than anything, though, Raabs book is about the profound ways in which we may be transformed in and through the act of writing.

In reading some of her lovely introductory words about this process, I was reminded of a phrase attributed to the French philosopher Jules Lequier: To create, and in creating be created. In some ways the idea is a simple one, but its significance cannot be overestimated. For what it ultimately suggests is that writingmeaningful writing, issuing from the heart and soul of the writeris a vehicle of change, of moving from one state of knowing and feeling and being to another, one that is deeper, more real, more true. In carrying out the research on which this book is based, Raab found that the act or experience of writing results in a heightened sense of awareness and an identity that becomes transformed, in addition to a deeper understanding of ones place in the world (p. 5). This may be so whatever genre one chooses, but it is especially so when writing about ones own life. By documenting the story of your life, Raab adds, you have the chance to relive, examine, and reconstruct your lived experiences in a way that can be empowering. Whats more, By working through your life, you are able to draw a certain amount of energy from what you have been through, reconcile yourself with your experiences, and then move forward (p. 6).

As Raab well knows, this process doesnt always work neatly. In fact, there are times when it doesnt appear to work at all. For some, telling the story of their lives can be anything but empowering; suddenly seeing what they either couldnt see or wouldnt see earlier on can be draining and demoralizingat least for a time. There may be no reconciliation, either, and no moving forward; ones now-open wounds may be too fresh and too paralyzing. If Raab is right, however, there still remains room for growth, painful and difficult though it may be, and writing can play a vitally important role in the process. This is because what may have heretofore been inchoate and obscure or even utterly opaque has at least risen into the light of consciousness. And for all the pain that may be involved in this rising, it is the pain of birth and growth. Something has become available that wasnt before, and coming face to face with that something is the requisite condition for moving beyond it.