Last week, I finished the first draft of my latest novel, which I have called ‘I’m Here‘. The big push to finally finish it was provided by my sister, as we challenged each other to finish the first drafts of our projects by the 11th March, and both of us made it! In the last few days leading up to the deadline, I was writing anything from 3000 to 5500 words a day. I could have just written 1500 words a day for two weeks, but instead I preferred to leave it all to the last minute and write 15,000 words in just a few days. Anybody who has done Nanowrimo and loves the last minute, will understand this!

It was weird to finally finish the book, because unlike many of my other novels, this one took a considerable amount of time to come into being. I wrote down the idea for the book more than a year prior to beginning it. I then started to write the book during Nanowrimo in November 2012. But I hit a block and found myself unable to continue writing it. So I stopped and decided to write The Other Side instead. Then in November 2013, during Nanowrimo, I decided it was time to finish it. I cut the last chapter I had written the previous year, and started to write. But again, I hit blocks during that month and set it aside again. I was struggling to get it finished, and it was only the deadline imposed by my sister (and the promise of a homemade prize!) that got me to finish it.

One of the reasons I think I found it difficult to finish the book, was because over the last few years, I have noticed that many of the events that I have written about in my books, have actually come to pass. It might sound totally crazy, but not only have I met some of my characters in real life (with the same names, characteristics, appearances, personality etc.) but I have also experienced some of the situations I have created in my novels. So when writing this book, I had a vague idea of where it was going, and I didn’t want to write it, because I didn’t want it to happen in my own life.

Now, if you are into the law of attraction, or believe in saying or writing affirmations, you might not find this concept to be so crazy. After all, with every word we think or say, we are creating our own reality. We are choosing what we are going to experience. And when I write these scenes, these stories, I am in effect, calling them forth to me. This idea was brought home to me when I read the story of the author Iain Banks, who died of cancer shortly after writing a novel about a man who dies of cancer. In this article it is said that he had written 90% of the novel before finding out his own diagnosis, so it wasn’t based on his own experiences. Some people may be offended by the idea that by writing the book, he chose to experience the same fate as his character. And I do honestly hope that is not the case. But what if we do have the power to choose our own reality in that way? My new book explores that idea, that we do actually have a choice in what we experience in life. That our intentions become our reality.

When I was a child, I loved the cartoon Penny Crayon. She was a girl who had the ability to create anything – places, people, objects, by drawing them with her special crayon. I was fascinated by the idea as a child, because it somehow made perfect sense to me. Over the years, I have manifested many things, often with the help of vision boards or through writing down my desires in the form of a simple sentence – I choose to tune into the reality where… I have lost count of the number of times I have read back through notebooks and diaries only to find what I had chosen and written down, had actually become my reality.

I have also lost count of the number of times people have asked me to write a book about them winning the lotto…

The thing is, with this knowledge, you would think I would just write about the things I would like to experience, that I would craft the stories to reflect what I wish for in my life. But it doesn’t work that way for me. When I write, I have no real say in what happens in the story. I am merely recording, writing down, the story of the characters. I have joked before now about not being an author, but a spiritual secretary, just taking dictation from above. So I decided that whether I wanted to create the reality or not, the book needed to be written. I’m now in the editing stages, and am planning to publish it by April/May. I will post updates on the progress of it, and plan to post excerpts from it very soon.

In the meantime, I’m going to choose the reality where I have a cup of tea and a cake in front of me, and I hope you choose the reality where you have a fabulous Monday!

Wow, look what I manifested!!