Call for Manuscripts (from Absolute Write) And My Manuscript In Response Editor looking for manuscripts from people in their upper-fifties through their sixties who have something to say about their life experience. Consider any of the following jumping off points (or none of them) to write a cohesive, emotionally engaging essay or short story. (Maximum 1,500 words). If writing in story form, the events and people must be real. True stories about your youth, heart-warming reminisces, pathos, flower power, Haight-Ashbury, Viet Nam, Woodstock, The Beatles, etc. Dynamic individuals who changed your life, were your role models, who showed you something you had never considered, who changed the course of your life. What wisdom, what insights, what knowledge have you gained? What changes in perspective about business, religion, marriage, family, people in other countries, and the planet earth have you experienced? What have you accomplished that you, in your youth, never knew you would? What process/es brought that into being? What paranormal experiences have you had? If you had the opportunity to say something to someone who is no longer here, what would that be? What do you hold to be unshakably true that you didn?t know 40-45 years ago? How are you different from, or how are you the same as, you were 40-45 years ago? What things that you used to disagree with your parents about do you now agree, or what things that you used to agree with them do you now disagree? What is the most beautiful thing you?ve ever seen? What is the most beautiful piece of music you?ve ever heard? What was your favorite television show when you were ten to fifteen years old? What?s your favorite television show now? What is the greatest movie ever produced? What?s the best novel ever written? What?s the best nonfiction book you?ve ever read? Tell about the picture you had of your life as a child and how it has actually unfolded. What is lovely about that? Please do answer or address the following question: If you could say or express one thing that you believe, truly believe, in your deepest heart of hearts, would change the world for the better, what would that be? Be honest and tell your truth! Payment, at present, is shared revenue of profits, specifics to be determined by number of participants, and other minor details. Send via email, either in body or as attachment (Mac or RTF/TEXT) to: susie@alighthere.com. Put SUBMISSION: ?What I?ve Learned? in subject line. Failing to do so may cause your manuscript to be lost as spam. I thank you beforehand for your heart-felt work, Susie Wolfington, Assistant Editor ALightHere.com Books - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's my manuscript: My honest, deeply held, belief about what will change the world for the better is not a pipe dream. It is happening now among people of my generation as well as other age groups. Consciousness is being raised (without drugs this time). People are realizing that we are all One. People are becoming multi-sensory-- limited to the five senses. We are far less left-brained and much more intuitive. We know on a profound level that mother earth is emitting her death throes and that it is up to us to do something and soon before global warming and violence put an end to us all. This miracle will be brought about by a generation of people that have transformed themselves from fear-driven, ego-run automatons to human beings in touch with their souls who believe love is the solution to every problem. As one neighbor forgives another at home and across the world, just as a butterfly's motions in one pole are felt in another, healing will come to the world. Harmony will reign when love rules all. There are signs of it happening now everywhere if you look. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am 59 years-old and consider myself an old hippie. I am self-employed as a freelance writer and an online bookseller. I don't really make enough money to support myself without my disability check. My work is the result of following Joseph Campbell's advice to "follow your bliss". I love books and I love to write. I haven't sold out and I'm proud of it. I don't have to get up every morning, hate my life and put on nylons. I try to only write articles that I can be proud of. I sell books I don't have to be ashamed of. I attempt to practice the same integrity in my businesses that I practice in my relationships with friends and family. I have worked to remain true to many of the idealistic beliefs I had when I was young and in the movement. I have turned my back on materialism. I own next to nothing. I think I may be one of the last Americans standing without a cell phone. I do not have a car. I buy things when I must at thrift stores. I can't remember when I last bought something new. I have no money in the bank--no savings or stocks for a rainy day or for my retirement. I trust God to take care of me and the lilies of the field as He has all these years. I eat simply, healthily and avoid meat. I don't drink or take drugs except for prescription drugs I must take. I went to my first rock and roll concert when I was 15. I had to go by myself because no one at my high school that I knew wanted to see the "dirty and disgusting" Rolling Stones. It was their first American tour. I sat so close to the stage I could see Mick Jagger sweat. I didn't miss a Stones concert after that until after my kids were born and I was in my 40's. I even caught them in Europe once. I married my childhood sweetheart when we were both 18 and we left Illinois after the wedding and headed to Haight-Ashbury to live. I remember driving across the country with nothing to eat but a jar of homemade pickles his aunt had given us. We had all our wedding gifts packed into a little Ford Falcon and no real money or job prospects. We weren't worried. We figured everyone took care of everyone else and the universe took care of those that got looked over. When we got to San Francisco, we immediately met a young man from Illinois. He told us he wasn't doing anything that day except planning to jump from the bridge and kill himself so he would show us around. After the tour we went back to his place and, sure enough, he had written a suicide note on the mirror. The next time we moved it was to Northern Minnesota in the Superior National Forest where we built a lean-to and planned to "get back to the land", a popular movement at the time. We were city kids with no camping experience and we floundered a lot. We spent three months in those woods in 1969, and missed Woodstock because we didn't know anything about it. Boy, were we mad. I never knew I would graduate from college. I didn't start until I was 23, after I divorced my husband. There was a time I had to work three part-time jobs while in school, and I always worked at least one, but I was able to put myself through college. College was the most fun I never imagined growing up. My counselor kept bugging me to choose a major, but I wanted to learn it all. Unlike the kids who went straight to college from high school, I was thrilled every single day to be there. Finally I realized that as an English major I would be getting college credit for reading books that I would have been home reading anyhow. What a scam I thought. Those sun-drenched days reading Shakespeare beneath shade trees with the smell of pot smoke all around me from other students--those were golden days. I specialized in creative writing. I didn't want to teach. I learned that I loved to write short stories and poetry. I wrote some of both about my hippie days with my by now-ex husband and our adventures. The professor said they were some of the best of that kind of stuff he'd read. I only knew then what I know now: when I write there is no time. One minute it's ten o'clock in the morning and when I look up it's six a.m. I have learned quite a few things in my life, thank God, that I didn't know or appreciate 40 years ago. "To thine own self be true" is a maxim seriously worth living by. Forty years ago I wanted to be a non-comformist, a flower child, then a hippie, so I wore my hair long and straight, wore paisley and fringe, and said "Holy Shit" a lot. I lived in fear some fellow hippie might not think I was cool enough. I was pretentious as hell. I had to be up on the latest music and pop cultural icons or I was nobody. I thought I was so damn free and I didn't know how to be spontaneous. I couldn't be silly because I was too hip. I thought like others, talked like others--probably even walked like other people. All the posturing robbed me of my youth. Today I know who I am and I really don't give too much of a good hot damn what other people think about my somewhat strange ways, whereas when I thought I was being so outrageous as a kid I sometimes was bothered by "straight" people's reactions to me. I re-married when I was 36. I managed to find another aging hippie. He was, of course, like I was at the time a bit crispy. We met in A.A. He died about eight years ago from a cancer that started in his eye. I have wondered if it was the result of the time he dropped acid and stared at the sun all day. Now that would be something I finally agree with my mother about today, and my father if he were living. I wouldn't want my two kids, ages 19 and 22, doing all the drugs I did. I am thrilled that they only smoke pot. They both deny ever getting close enough to cocaine to have ever seen it. I have told them the truth about my drug experiences in the hopes that they might listen, learn and save themselves some suffering. I think I took LSD over 250 times. I would not want my kids taking it once and that sort of surprises me but it's the truth. Other things i have learned in the past 40 years are that I don't want a life that is ego-driven. I need to meditate to hear the still small voice within. I can follow inner guidance and act lovingly or I can fall asleep to my soul and end up being self-will run riot and make a mess of my life if I choose. I have learned that romantic love is a trivial pursuit compared to practicing compassion. I am open to the idea of a spiritual partner but not a love interest of the romantic variety. I am too old for such nonsense and wasted far too much time on it in my salad days. I have learned more about respecting my body, and I regret a lot of the abuse I put it through back then. Neil Young is still one of my rock and roll idols, but I spent one Christmas utterly moved by "The Messiah" and wanted to hear it over and over. I would like to read the finished compilation of these manuscripts.

FINDING YOUR TRUE LIFE'S WORK: "DOORS WILL OPEN WHERE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THEY WERE GOING TO BE"

"If you follow your bliss," Joseph Campbell* said, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there a while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

Oprah Winfrey also is a big believer in people establishing new careers by following their bliss and she is a perfect example of the theory herself. People who love what they do, do it well, and are well rewarded for doing it. Life is far too short to stay stuck in a dead-end job collecting a pay check and being unhappy.

We were all given talents. Many of us lost our belief in our gifts because they weren't encouraged when we were children. We may have lost them by feeling inferior and unworthy as a result of thoughtless criticism from teachers or even parents.

We are not supposed to hide our light under a basket. We need to free ourselves-to return to our childhood exuberance and become the very one we truly are. George Eliot wrote, "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

It really is never too late. We have only to get in touch with our spiritual side. But then as the philosopher Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." It is only that we let our human side, our ego, our lesser self, get in the way of the spiritual self we are created to be. That being is not motivated by fear and resentment but by love.

How do we get in touch with our higher self? Many religious people are not spiritual. Also, many spiritual people are not religious. If you can formulate a concept of a power greater than yourself that you are comfortable with, that is a great start. If you already have one, so much the better.

Begin tuning into the spiritual simply by being still and quiet.  We cannot hear the small voice within each of us that directs and guides when we are noisy and all over the place jumping from one activity to the next. Slow down.

Then begin to meditate. Any meditation method will do. Just still the body and mind so the spirit can come through. Focus on the breaths. Take in deep breaths and watch each go in and out. If you think a thought don't be discouraged, just watch it float over you like a cloud and say "Thought."  You will notice an improvement in your well-being and in your life almost immediately once you start a discipline of regular meditation.

Pray. Even if you aren't sure who, if anyone, is out there, act as if. Talk to this entity, perhaps beginning by saying, "Hey, I don't even know if you're there, but if you are will you show me the way home."

Begin to notice the increased coincidences in your life. Coincidences, they say, are just miracles God doesn't sign his or her name to. Things will begin to change in your life. Something, call it the universe, is trying to get your attention and miraculous events are taking place more often the more you notice them and wonder what message you are supposed to take from them.

Then all things become possible. If our lives are based on love rather than fear, we can no longer show up just to collect a paycheck because we think that's what we're supposed to do in life according to the way we were brought up.  A new career direction may  begin to reveal itself to you.  A life transformation might start with quitting a much-hated job. 

You can help this process by using your non-physical guides. Who are they?  Some believe they are old souls we knew in past lives. Others believe they are the departed souls of friends and family members from this life. But we all have people watching lovingly over us just waiting for a word or sign from you to begin to help directing you. You can ask them questions as you would ask a friend. Ask, "What is my motivation for continuing to stay in the same old dead-end job and what can I do about it?" Then pay attention. Keep an open mind.  Say to them, "Help me, please,  I lack courage, strength and direction.  Guide me.  Show me the way."  Doors will open that you didn't know were there.

Spiritual awakening has to mean a new direction in your career or a new career because being spiritual means that you cannot conduct business as usual unless you conducted your nine to five life authentically and honestly.  You will want to act from a higher ground of love which means honesty, integrity, responsibility and compassion direct our actions.  You will not want to work with the notion of "What's in it for me?" anymore and this will change everything.

You can develop your innate psychic abilities to further direct you. Practice re-learning what you were taught to forget as a child. Guess who's on the phone or at the door before you pick it up or open it. Predict what mail you'll be getting that day. Work on empathy. When talking with a friend try to feel what he feels Then state the feelings to him and ask if you are correct. There is nothing weird or odd about psychic abilities. They are gifts that everyone has but let wither from disbelief and not using them.

The more loving and compassionate you become,  the more you will be on the path to following your bliss. Far from serving as a permission to anything you will desires goes, instead of selfish pursuits you find that you want to serve. You want to contribute to your community and to the world because your heart is full. This is how we are going to change and save this poor planet-by transforming ourselves one by one.  We are evolving as human beings.  Can you feel it in the air?  More people are choosing freedom to be who they are and do what they really want to do.  It always ends in bliss and love.

Following your bliss will put you in touch with the dreams of your real self. Remember that soul? You will find yourself doing things called  work that feel more like play.   Like Joseph Campbell experienced,  invisible hands will reach out and take yours and show you the way to your new life's work.

___________________


*Joseph Campbell--American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology.

MAID'S DAY OFF

Housework is anathema to me. I am literally and metaphysically allergic to it. The only slightly larger waste of time I can even think of offhand might be building sand castles on the beach as the tide is coming in. To me it is pointless, petty and doing it is only a harbinger of what I imagine hell must be like. So, of course, I live in chaos and a bit of filth. Yet I try to keep up some sort of pretense of domesticated life when people come over, an event I attempt to thwart at all costs but which sometimes conspires beyond my best lack of welcoming. For example, one lovely Saturday afternoon my lover dropped by. He should have known better by that point in our relationship than to do the "drop-in" but he was playing dumb, I suspect, to get a gander at how his little mystery woman lived behind the door she always kept carefully closed. Not only had he broken all the rules by doing dropping in unannounced, but, horror of horrors, he had brought his two young adolescent sons whom I barely knew having only met them once briefly. What a way to make a good impression! I listened to them calling for me on the other side of the door, and looked around my destroyed living room which led to the mutilated bathroom and then to my slaughtered bedroom. My Gawd, what was I to do?. It was too late to pretend I wasn't home. They had heard me talking on the phone, unsuspecting guests, when they came up the stairs. What a fool I had been. Now I was stuck. I needed to be resourceful or I was about to be thoroughly humiliated. A gleaning of an idea came to me. I messed up my hair and pulled my blouse out from the waist of my pants. I picked up a nearby floorful of items and threw them across the room. Then I was ready to face the music which was definitely in the genre of punk. "Oh hello Jim. Hello boys. How are you all?" Their six eyes were wide as platters as they frankly took a good look at the unravelings of my mind and the physical form of the ennui of my domestic spirit. The younger boy muttered "Holy S**t" under his breath but I heard him clearly and took it as my cue to go into my unrehearsed act. "Isn't this something, boys? Can you believe this? I came home last night and this is what I found. I don't even know what all is missing yet. I'm afraid to find out. What kind of animals could tear up a place like this? What were they looking for I wonder? I just can't believe it!" Their slack jaws drew shut and their eyes focused on me with something that looked like pity. It was working. Hot damn! It was working. "Someone broke in here last night?" asked the slower of the boys. "Did you call the police?" "Oh, yeah, sure I did, but they were long gone. The police didn't do much because I am not even sure if they stole anything yet. I mean my computer is still here, and my TV and my stereo." Jim decided to step in and be my hero. "Well, you are coming to stay at our house tonight. You can't stay here in this mess. Who knows if they'll come back?" Uh ho. I realized I had gone too far. I wasn't ready to leave my happy home where I could roll in my own mess like a pig wallows in mud. I mean I'm quite comfortable in my squalor. I sure didn't want to leave. "Oh, I'll be fine. They're not coming back. For what? They already know there's nothing here to steal. They've had their fun trashing the place." The older boy spoke up, "Well, they sure did trash the place. I never saw anything like this before." "I know," I replied. "Ain't it a shame." I hate housework.

WRITING SLAVES OR "ARTICLERS"

Two want-ads for freelance writers I have recently seen that strike me as a new low for real writers. Today's, on Elance boards, was for an "articler" who, of course, would write articles. The other was for someone who could produce articles at 50 cents each. I tell you it's no wonder I'm on Prozac. If I wasn't already I'd be starting out on it now. All I really want to write for are "Field Reports" which, unfortunately, is having major construction problems and not operating at this time, and "Skirt" Magazine. Both of these publish only personal essays for pay. The question I keep asking myself is do I still have the heart and soul to write personal essays after punching out 500 words here and 600 there on everything from the dieting drug Alli to dining out while dieting? To be continued.

WRITING SLAVES OR "ARTICLERS" Part 2

I just found another new market (new to me) for authors not articlers: Orato.com. It, too, is strictly first person stories. They call them news stories, and, do, in fact, prefer stories that have to do with sizzling news taking place right where you the writer were. But they will also publish stories about love breakups and working at Burger King. You can either pitch your story to the editors or self-publish it. You get paid outright, plus there is something called "tips" for the writer at the end of your story where cash tips can be left. Read the guidelines here. I joined up because it seems to be an informative, edgy and fun website for writers and readers.

WRITING SLAVES OR "ARTICLERS"