Dan Millman - The Creative Compass: Writing Your Way from Inspiration to Publication

A LSO BY D AN M ILLMAN

T HE P EACEFUL W ARRIOR S AGA

Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior

The Journeys of Socrates

Peaceful Warrior: The Graphic Novel

G UIDEBOOKS

The Four Purposes of Life

Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior

Everyday Enlightenment

The Life You Were Born to Live

No Ordinary Moments

The Laws of Spirit

Body Mind Mastery

Living on Purpose

I NSPIRATION

Bridge Between Worlds (with Doug Childers)

C HILDRENS B OOKS

Secret of the Peaceful Warrior

Quest for the Crystal Castle

A LSO BY S IERRA P RASADA

Creative Lives: Portraits of Lebanese Artists

An H J Kramer book

published in a joint venture with

New World Library

Copyright 2013 by Dan Millman and Sierra Prasada Millman

Page 125: Lyrics from The Windmills of Your Mind (from The Thomas Crowne Affair). Words by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Music by Michel Legrand. Copyright 1968 (renewed) by United Artists Music Co., Inc. All rights controlled and administered by EMI U Catalog Inc. (publishing) and Alfred Music (print). All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

First printing, October 2013

ISBN 978-1-932073-65-2

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A s H ALLEYS COMET streaked across the night sky, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born. Years later, after making a reputation for himself under the pen name Mark Twain, he declared with characteristic audacity that he would die only after hed seen Halleys comet once more. On April 20, 1910 seventy-four years after his birth that comet reappeared. The very next day, Sam died.

Soon after, a journalist visited Hannibal, Missouri, and spoke to some of the authors old cronies, one of whom remarked, Heck, we all knew the same stories as Sam did we just never bothered to write em down.

We wrote this book for all those who bother to write em down.

And for Joy, who connects the dots between us.

T HE BOOK BEFORE YOU, written by Dan Millman and his daughter Sierra Prasada, a published author in her own right, shows how to develop and refine the way you think about and approach your writing, and outlines how to accomplish the goals you have set for yourself. Through a series of questions and well-developed answers, father and daughter look separately and together at what they have discovered about their own writing and the writing of others.

Much of what they suggest about how to become a better writer centers on determined, committed, and organized effort. They remind us that the quality of our daily life and action is reflected in the writing we produce.

In The Creative Compass, Dan and Sierra offer advice on all aspects of the writing life. From the first glimmerings of an idea to the completion of a polished piece; from dreams of seeing your work in print to the reality of being published; from feeling lost to finding a way its all here.

Thoughtful, thorough, and practical in its application, this is an important work on the creative process, and on the craft, business, and magic of writing.

Read it through. Decide for yourself. You wont regret it.

T ERRY B ROOKS

The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

S AMUEL J OHNSON

Y ou MAY NOT HAVE REALIZED IT YET, but youre a storyteller. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, whether you make films, speak to large crowds, care for children, or work at an office every day, you swap stories with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers. Few of us would ever think to call ourselves storytellers. Yet we all take a sweet, deep pleasure in telling good stories, some of them true. Like this one:

Not so very long ago, a young girl showed her father something shed written, a part of herself, upon which he lavished the same attention that he gave to his own published work. Even as she herself began to publish in newspapers, magazines, and books, she continued to show her writing to him. Soon she began to critique his work in turn, and mentorship evolved into a collaboration that balanced his experience and perspective with her energy and ingenuity. That collaboration led to spirited conversation about what it means to make ones own way as a storyteller and writer, and to a partnership, as father and daughter became coauthors.

In this book we share with you an adaptable approach to any creative project, grounded in a cycle of five universal stages: Dream, Draft, Develop, Refine, and Share. No matter your level of experience, youll find something about this cycles basic structure familiar. Were all intuitively aware that works of invention begin with an idea and emerge from ritual and labor. Yet it remains mysterious how a finished book, for instance, could have started as a draft, or a full-length symphony from a simple melodic phrase. As members of an audience, we usually reach for words like talented, genius, or brilliant, even miraculous, to describe transformations that we cant witness and dont understand. But the key to such transformation lies in a dynamic attitude toward dreaming, a layered approach to drafting, and, most of all, in distinguishing the fourth stage, Refine, from the third, which revolves around what we call development.

Youll learn how to conceive, begin, and stick with exciting new projects.

The Develop stage is the middle act in a cycle that repeats with each project and that you may return to more than once before you complete each project, like a wheel within a wheel. Development is where the magic happens and, because Were not magicians, we have no qualms about sharing the secrets of our trade with you. Its your trade as well, after all.

As you read on, youll learn how to conceive, begin, and stick with exciting new projects. Youll find your way in conversation with yourself, fellow writers, early readers, characters, and the world at large. It wont be one so-called best way, and most likely not the way you first seized upon, but rather the way that you determine, over time and trial, best serves you and your creative work.