How to Take a Writing Retreat or Writing Sabbatical
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I'm Writing a Book About My Year Off
Greetings from Lotusland is the story of how one 40-something left her job to travel, write a book and enjoy what's most important in life.
If this were a book, this would be the compelling front cover that would entice you to pick this book off the shelf, the inside front and back cover encouraging you to keep reading on and the oh so engrossing back cover that would give you a brief summary of what the book's about. Greetings from Lotusland is a work in progress using Squidoo as an interactive writing tool to workshop a first draft.
The Best Resource To Plan Your Year Off
Guide to Plan Your Writing Sabbatical or Writing Retreat
"Is there a way to take the break you long for--the archaeological dig in Costa Rica, the film-making course in Los Angeles, the six-month hike along the coast of Newfoundland--without sacrificing your home, family, career, and savings? You bet. For every excuse you've ever harbored as to why you can't fulfill your heart's desires, the authors have a solution. This is a take-action, how-to book for any grown-up who still believes in summer vacations."
Six Months Off: How to Plan, Negotiate, and Take the Break You Need Without Burning Bridges or Going Broke
Amazon Price: $18.19 (as of 05/27/2012)
How to Plan, Negotiate, and Take the Break You Need Without Burning Bridges or Going Broke
Amid the profusion of career titles comes a book that advocates taking time off. The idea is not as crazy as it may sound. The authors interviewed hundreds of workers who have taken leaves of absence and representatives of companies that encourage the practice.
Greetings from Lotusland
Engrossing Back Cover Copy
So when her work life sours and Yukiko realizes her dream job is no longer worth salvaging, she quits her job and retreats to Barcelona which later evolves into travels through Florence, Portugal and Morocco. But rather than simply play the professor's wife, her husband issues a challenge -- use the time to write the book she's always wanted to complete.
Part travelogue, part memoir, part inspiration Greetings From Lotusland is the story of one mid-lifer's desire to embrace all that life has to offer. But first, Yukiko just needs to get out of her own way -- battling insecurities about writing and indecisiveness of what course her life should take next. Upon her return from Spain, serendipity finds Yukiko a seasonal gardening job which allows her to split her time between her home in Washington, D.C. and her parents in Vancouver, Canada.
Greetings From Lotusland celebrates Barcelona and Vancouver, two world class cities deserving of the same loving attention as Tuscany and Provence chronicled in Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence. Yukiko follows her bliss to enjoy good food, wine and other simple pleasures as well as the joy of spending time with her husband, friends and family. With a similar inner soul searching and self discovery as Eat, Pray, Love, Greetings From Lotusland asks the simple question -- how do you do more of what you really want to do and less of what you don't? Like the 4 Hour Workweek, Yukiko challenges the traditional conventions of how we spend our time and what we need to do to summon the courage within ourselves to indulge in the extravagance of time so we can spend it with those we love the most.
Embrace all life has to offer, for one spends a long time dead.
Dr. Jonathan Sackier
Become the Heroine of Your Own Story
Inspiration From Joan Anderson
The Second Journey: The Road Back to Yourself
Amazon Price: $2.00 (as of 05/27/2012)
"Life, like a beach, is always rearranging itself. The trick is to work with, not against the changes. We are in a constant state of metamorphosis, experiencing conflicts for which we must find resolution and in doing so deepening our innate strengths. The goal is to look back again and again and befriend that person you once intended to become. The reader will eventually garner the sustenance and inspiration to move away from the predictable and redesign her life in her own image...to become not only her own best friend but the heroine of her life story."
Excerpts from joanandersononline.com
This is the Kind of Book I'd Like to Write
The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler
"With little left to lose, the author launched a year's experiment in desire. As the months go by, the author is humbled to discover the courage it takes to make a wish and thus open oneself to the unknown. She is surprised when her experiment expands in ways she never imagined."
The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire
Amazon Price: (as of 05/27/2012)
"But most of all, she is amazed to find her wishes begin to come true and overflow her expectations. A delightfully candid memoir, charming, compelling, and ultimately joyful, the author records a journey into the art and soul of wishing which will inspire even the most skeptical reader to search the skies for the next shooting star."
Product Description from Amazon.com
Sarah Susanka, Author The Not So Big Life, On The Wishing Year
I Want To Tell My Story Like These Authors
Here's What I Want People to Say About The Book I'm Writing
Borrowed Testimonials and Blurbs
Book Blurbs I Would Love That Are Actually About Eat, Pray, Love
"Takes readers on a thought provoking year and the journey is unforgettable."
ExpandedBooks.com
""This insightful, funny account of her travels reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes.""
Entertainment Weekly
"If a more likable writer is currently in print, I haven't found him or her"...Her "prose is fueled by a mix of intelligence, wit, and colloquial exuberance that is close to irresistible."
The New York Times Book Review
Book Blurbs I Would Love That Are Actually About The 4 Hour Workweek
Bo Burlingham, Editor-at-Large, Inc. Magazine
This "book is about gaining the courage to streamline your life....But even more than that, it challenges the reader to seriously consider an essential-yet rarely asked-question: What do you really want from life?"
Rolf Potts, Author Vagabonding
It's a new way of looking at a very old problem: "just how can we work to live and prevent our lives from being all about work? A world of infinite options awaits those who would read this book and be inspired by it!"
Michael E. Gerber, Founder & Chairman of E-Myth Worldwide
"If you want to live life on your own terms, this is your blueprint."
Mike Maples, Co-founder of Motive Communications
This book "is an absolute necessity for those adventurous souls who want to live life to its fullest. Buy it and read it before you sacrifice any more!"
John Lusk, Group Product Manager, Microsoft World Headquarters
"If you want to live your dreams now, and not in 20 or 30 years, buy this book!"
Laura Roden, Chairman of the Silicon Valley Association of Start-up Entrepreneurs
I Wish My Book Jacket Flap Sounded Like This
"With fierceness, irreverence, and unbreakable resolve," Yukiko learns a "most important lesson: the art of living with gusto." Greetings from Lotusland is "a feast, a voyage, and a marvel for anyone who has ever longed for a more delicious life."
Inside Back Cover Copy
Editorial Review I Would Love That's About "Your Money or Your Life"
Why do we work so hard to make the money that will buy the things that will make us happy rather than work less to spend the time doing things that will make use happy?
"There's a big difference between 'making a living' and making a life. Does making a living feel more like making a dying? From this inspiring book, learn how to attain a wholeness of livelihood and lifestyle."
Amazon.com Editorial Review
HELP! What Kind of Book Should I Write?
Please Tell Me What You Think. Leave Comments.
They say that you should write the kind of book you would read. I read voraciously. Not classics or high minded novels. I'm taken with life adventure stories, memoirs, biographies and strangely enough, true crime stories. I suppose it's a peek into souls gone bad. But I'm equally a sucker for self help books.
I still haven't figured out the right format for my book. After people have read it, I want them to go "yah, where do I sign up? OK, I'm ready to do x, y, z so I can take a year off too" or to just sit back and enjoy the armchair adventure.
One thought is to write it more like a "How to Take A Writing Retreat or Sabbatical or Year Off" along the lines of Tim Ferris' "Four Hour Work Week" or Elaine St. James elegantly simple "Simplify Your Life". There's a similar book out about sabbaticals called "6 Months Off". I think I am capable of writing this kind of book.
However, I really wanna write a more inspiring book like "eat, pray, love", "julie and julia", or "kitchen confidential" to try to capture the joys and frustrations, the ups and downs and how I overcame challenges and frustrations.
I would like to be able to share the essence of my one year adventure and to have people so emotionally wrapped up in the magic that they take some part of that feeling and channel it into making changes in their own lives. I'm not sure if my writing skills match my ambitions.
So What Happens Next?
Read on
Greetings From Lotusland
Please share any thoughts you may have on life, love, happiness and realizing your potential.
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Shadrosky
Mar 20, 2012 @ 2:47 pm | delete
- I'd like to take about the next 50 years off to write books full time! :D. Great lens!
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LotusMalas
Oct 8, 2010 @ 6:23 am | delete
- Sounds like an exciting adventure!
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toriphile81 Aug 28, 2010 @ 10:04 pm | delete
- I'm a writer, plotting my first book, so I can totally relate to this :)
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WordCustard
Mar 3, 2010 @ 4:44 am | delete
- Intriguing. You have an engaging writing style and I'm looking forward to hearing more about this work in progress.
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crystaljewels
Feb 22, 2010 @ 8:13 am | delete
- Good job, i can't wait to read the whole book!
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by Lotusland
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
Confucious
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